Online course
3. Wastewater Characteristics
Wastewater characterization is essential for any wastewater study or a project, be at laboratory-, bench-, pilot- or full-scale. This interesting course explains characteristics of flows in both sewered and non-sewered sanitation. After completion of this course you will understand wastewater types and their characteristics, physical and chemical occurrence of its components, microorganisms present in the sewage, and characteristics of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, including their fractionation. You will learn about population equivalent, importance of ratios between various components in wastewater, domestic and non-domestic sewage components, various domestic sewage sub-streams, and internal loads at wastewater treatment plant. You will become familiar with non-sewered (onsite) sanitation flows and basic definitions of terms. Finally, the course will enable you to understand the fundamental principles of wastewater and sludge sampling and of the design of a sampling program within the wider urban context.
Course information
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Objectives
After completion of the course you should be able to approach characterization of sewered and non-sewered sanitation flows with confidence, by understanding the most important characteristics of wastewater, and faecal and septic sludge. You will also be able to calculate fractions of organic matter, nitrogen, and phosphorus in wastewater, as well as to design a wastewater and sludge sampling and monitoring program. This course is an essential building block if you wish to study the removal of COD, N, and P from wastewater, and perform design and process calculations, and modelling (presented in courses 4, 5, 6, and 14).
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Syllabus
This course covers the following topics:
- Wastewater Types and Their Characteristics: Introduction
- Wastewater Types and Their Characteristics: Microorganisms
- Wastewater Types and Their Characteristics: Organic Matter
- Wastewater Types and Their Characteristics: Other Characteristics
- Wastewater Fractionation: Physical and Chemical Occurrence of Wastewater Components
- Wastewater Fractionation: Organic Matter
- Wastewater Fractionation: Nitrogen
- Wastewater Fractionation: Phosphorus
- Wastewater Constituents: Typical Wastewater Composition – Part 1
- Wastewater Constituents: Typical Wastewater Composition – Part 2
- Wastewater Dynamics and Sampling: Dynamics of Wastewater Characteristics
- Wastewater Dynamics and Sampling: Sampling
- Wastewater Dynamics and Sampling: Sampling Examples
- Examples and Exercises: Example
- Examples and Exercises: Additional Exercises
- Examples and Exercises: Wastewater Design
- Closing Remarks: Wastewater Fingerprint
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Organization
This course consists of video lectures, presentation slides, reading materials, exercises, and assignments with solutions. In principle, each video presentation has its complementary presentation slides. All videos are available for viewing in the section “Video-recorded presentations”. The materials are packaged in three (.zip) files, namely, the “Videos”, the “Presentations”, and the “Documents”. All the files can be downloaded from the section “Download course materials”. Some files may be of considerable size, so you need to ensure that your computer has sufficient bandwidth and capacity for downloading.
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Delivery Method
This course is currently designed for a SELF-STUDY mode. It is FREE, and does not include guidance, support, exams, assessment, and certification. It is possible that shortly, the series (or its parts) will be adopted by institutions that may deliver the guided version, including certification. As soon as this is the case, it will be advertised on this website
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Open Access
The content is available for free unlimited access and use, consistent with Global Sanitation Graduate School’s commitment to ensuring open access to information and knowledge. Please note that the video materials fall under the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), presentations under the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), readers (OA books of IWA Publishing) under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), and other readers under the license specified by the publisher. Although care has been taken to ensure the integrity and quality of these materials and information, no responsibility is assumed by the author(s), Global Sanitation Graduate School, or IHE Delft Institute for Water Education for any damage to property or persons as a result of the use of these materials and/or the information contained herein.
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