Biological Treatment

SYCHEM undertakes the design, construction, operation and maintenance of wastewater treatment plants.

Basic principles in wastewater treatment

Wastewater treatment process is based on some fundamental principles such as pretreatment and removal of pollutants (e.g nitrogen and phosphorus).

During the pretreatment stage the removal of solid wastes with screening and removal of oil and grit take place, in order to avoid either the development of toxic environment or very antagonistic environment for the bacterial communities.

During the secondary biological treatment, wastewater is treated under different conditions aerobic/anoxic/anaerobic. In each phase different bacterial communities are accounted for nitrogen removal (nitrification/denitrification) and phosphorus removal. The final effluent exhibits a great reduction of pollutants such as NO₃-, NO₂– and PO₄³– in the liquid supernatant.

In order to achieve a sustainable resource management and in consistency with the circular economy idea it is mandatory to establish a tertiary treatment so the produced water to meet the standards for reuse in agricultural activities (e.g irrigation), for aquifer enrichment or even for the production of potable water.