Dear Ali,
Companies are urged to take action to minimise the amount and strength of the effluent created by production processes. Producing less effluent in the first place will reduce the demands made on the effluent treatment plant and thus save both money and effort. A thorough understanding of the nature and properties of your company's effluents is essential for cost-effective pollution control. Improving the performance of the effluent treatment plant (ETP) will reduce your site's operating costs and make it easier for your site to comply with its discharge consent conditions. Sites discharging to sewer will also reduce their trade effluent charges. The true cost of effluent can be over six times greater than the cost of effluent disposal, because it includes: the value of raw materials and product lost in the effluent; the costs of lost production due to wasted product; the use of water and treatment chemicals; the operating costs of pollution control equipment; waste disposal costs, including trade effluent charges and pumping costs; costs associated with non-compliance with legislation, including fines, legal fees, the cost of remedial work following pollution incidents, staff time and increased insurance premiums; loss of potential sales to customers that refuse to trade with a company possessing a poor environmental record.
The following link contains interesting information.
http://www.das-europe.com/downloads/sewage-treatment-cost-effective-solution.html
With my best regards
Prof. Bachir ACHOUR
Recommendation by Nick Garcia could be useful....
Wastewater treatment in general has several steps, some intrinsically more expensive than others.
1. Removing Debris
2. Removing Suspended Organic Molecules
3. Disinfection
4. Removing other chemicals (optional, depends on region and regulations)
Here is my best guess at a cheap option for each of the first 3 steps.
1. Removing debris: usually done by a mesh screen. Afterwards settling tanks allow dense material (sludge) to settle and light material (scum) to rise and be skimmed off the top of the water. These can either be incinerated (cheap, polluting, can produce power), landfilled (kind of expensive), or used as feedstock for gasificiation (high capital costs, "clean" efficient power generation capabilities);
2. Removing suspended organics: After the solids have been removed the WW goes to aeration basins where activated sludge breaks down suspended organic molecules. Areation is energy intensive.
3. Disinfection is accomplished either through chlorination (medium-high maintenance, possibly dangerous) or UV (safe, high maintenance).
4. Removing other chemicals such as ammonia tend to involve more areation basins, and can cost roughly equal to the original aeration.
That being said, wastewater treatment is generally a pretty expensive, albeit important, enterprise. It requires a great amount of infrastructure, capital, and oganization. Depending on the actual implementation, costs for certain things (such as chlorination, landfilling, energy prices) can vary widely. At the same time there is a certain physically/technologically attainable minimum energy cost that is hard to get past.
Brown and Caldwell newsletters are generally a good way of staying up-to-date on new technology and methods: http://www.bcwaternews.com/
See the following links too. Hope they will be helpful.
http://www.mi-wea.org/docs/The%20cost%20of%20Biosolids.pdf
http://www.das-europe.com/downloads/sewage-treatment-cost-effective-solution.html
https://thewaternetwork.com/question-0-y/what-is-the-best-low-cost-solution-for-sewage-treatment-plant-for-low-cost-affordable-housing-SikklyXxDc5OdPC1o3L2hA
http://news.mit.edu/2015/cheaper-fracking-water-treatment-0716
https://www.engineeringforchange.org/ten-low-cost-ways-to-treat-water/
Economic estimation of each relevant treatment process pertains on water analysis and PMBOK method.
Prof. Bachir Achour and Raju Thapa have provided all encompassing answers. You may decide by keeping in view both point of views.
The TFR Technology
One recent technology now being used in 50 plants worldwide is able to offer high performance with minimal operating and maintenance costs. Developed in Germany, the TFR Bioreactor from DAS Environmental Expert can treat the organic load of industrial production effluent by biological microorganisms. The system is less costly because air does not need to be introduced into the wastewater to encourage growth of the biomass. In contrast to the conventional technology, the carrier material is not submerged in the wastewater. Instead, the TFR Bioreactor uses carrier material made of small plastic balls on which the biomass can grow and be aerated easily.
Effluent water trickles continuously from top to bottom over the packed bed, and ambient air is ventilated in the opposite direction. The biomass in the reactor is supplied with the, necessary air from the environment under almost no pressure by a simple fan that blows the air into the base of the reactor. The system has low energy consumption since the air does not have to be forced in under high pressure and no artificial movement of the biomass and its carrier material is needed in the reactor.
This unhindered contact between the wastewater and high-density population of microorganisms as well as the well-aerated growth bed is optimal for chemical transfer between biomass, water pollutants and oxygen in excess are the basis for the very high and stable biological degradation of pollutants. Together with optimally adjusted microorganism populations, this results in a high and stable decomposition in a relatively small space, even with fluctuating wastewater constituents from all types of food processing effluents.
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