Methods of monitoring of waste water treatment efficiency

One major result of implementing the Water Frame Directive (WFD) for the water industry is the likelihood of more stringent requirements for the efficiency of removal of the pollutants included in the list of WFD priority substances. During the last decade, an ongoing debate on the technical aspects of water treatment and on the fate and effects of its constituents after discharge are taking place. Due to the recent development of analytical techniques, the knowledge about the chemistry and toxicology of the waste water has increased considerable. Characterization of the oil treatment efficiency by total petroleum hydrocarbon concentration (TPH) is not sufficient any more. Waste water before and after treatment should be characterized by toxicity and amounts of the individual compounds and mixtures which trigger the toxicity. In the situations where more efficient oil removal from waste water is required to meet the requirements, there are a number of treatment options available, including some tertiary ("polishing") treatment systems. New generation tertiary wastewater treatment system for removal or reducing of the oil compounds, including dissolved polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, bearing along most toxic potential, was developed under a Eureka funded project. The new waste water treatment system involves novel monitoring device to verify that the dissolved and bioavailable fraction of the contaminants are degraded, and that the final effluent is cleaner also from a toxicity point of view. Previous studies showed that more toxic compounds might be produced during the treatment process due to the transformation of the original chemicals. The monitoring device consists of a membrane-based diffusive, time integrative (2-30 days) sampler. The newly developed fast analytical method for the analysis of membrane extracts enable to give us information on the dissolved concentrations for more than 80 oil related compounds in the effluents as well as the toxicity results, by using standard bio-assay tests. Moreover the monitoring system is capable to accurately sample most of the WFD priority substances in waste water treatment effluent waters. lt was found that some of the compounds were effectively removed in waste water treatment plant (WWTP), but other compounds remained in the dissolved phase at the same concentrations. Furthermore, volatilization of low molecular weight PAHs during the treatment process was studied by means of the new monitoring system, resulting in the identification of significant release of WFD pollutants to the air. The changes in time-integrative toxicity during the treatment process were evaluated by standard ecotoxicity analysis using the same membrane extracts. The three bio-assays used were Daphnia magna, Microtox and Algal but also other organism- or cell test systems will be tested further. Our developed monitoring device is the state-of-art method for screening for environmental toxicity by integrating biologically and chemically based techniques for early warning and ecosystem health assessment purposes. It can provide invaluable information in highly polluted environments where bioindicator organisms would not survive or behave normally.