Assessing the design inefficiencies of the waste water treatment plant :

Abstract

Information on wastewater treatment plants function in wastewater treatment is very important as the information can be used to detect undesirable qualities of water. The aim of the Study was to assess the design inefficiencies of the Wastewater treatment plant at Torero wastewater treatment plant, the plant receives sewage directly from users and septic tanks and consists of Primary plant (anaerobic ponds), secondary plant (mountain pond) and tertiary plant which a mixture of a quantic plants and free water surface (artificial wetland).

The plant discharges into Atirikuku stream where water for different activities are being withdrawn there by potentially causing harm to downstream operations. The objectives of the study were to find out the level of performance failures of each component, to improve on the system based on the findings and to test the performance of the proposed system.

Waste water samples were. Collected on different point of the plant that is raw wastewater Pond: effluent, wetland influent and wetland effluent. The parameters whose concentrations were determined included pH, electrical conductivity, temperature, BODs. TDS, TSS, Total phosphate. The study revealed that for most of the parameters under study, there was a decrease in their concentration after the water passed through the different stages of' treatment. The results revealed that the primary stage played a role in the removal of chemical pollutants were the best performance was obtained at BODs with removal efficiency of 43.6% and the artificial wetland played a role in the removal of nutrients.

The results of this study shows that not only the effluent of WWTP cannot meet the quality standards for discharge into the environment or waterbodies but also the total percentage removal of the secondary treatment level was not up to the recommended design percentage removal which indicate the extra application of the facultative pond treatment unit.

The study then concluded that from the findings that the designed facultative pond should be in incorporated in treatment system since the maturation pond cannot perform up to the required Standards under secondary treatment. Some recommendations considered were that regular monitoring, analysis and assessment of the efficiency level of the plant to remove pollutants from the waste water should be carried out.