In the field of water treatment, domestic sewage and industrial wastewater have formed two significantly different technical routes due to their distinct water quality characteristics and treatment objectives. To come up with the right treatment plans, you need to know how these two treatment processes are different.
Domestic sewage treatment primarily addresses wastewater generated from residents’ daily activities, with relatively stable composition dominated by organic matter, nutrients, and suspended solids. The typical domestic sewage treatment process comprises three core stages: pretreatment, biological treatment, and advanced treatment.
The pretreatment stage removes larger suspended solids through mechanical screens, separates inorganic particles in grit chambers, and initially regulates water quality and quantity. Biological treatment serves as the core component, employing activated sludge processes or biofilm methods to degrade organic pollutants using microbial communities. Among these, the Anaerobic-Anoxic-Oxic (A2O) process can simultaneously achieve organic matter removal and biological nitrogen and phosphorus removal, becoming the current mainstream technology.
The advanced treatment stage further removes trace pollutants and pathogenic microorganisms through processes like flocculation sedimentation, filtration, and disinfection, ensuring effluent meets discharge standards or reuse water standards. The entire treatment process emphasizes energy consumption optimization and operational stability, adapting to the relatively small fluctuations in domestic sewage quality.
Industrial wastewater treatment faces more complex challenges, with composition varying by industry and potentially containing high concentrations of refractory organic matter, heavy metals, toxic substances, and other pollutants. Therefore, industrial wastewater treatment requires customized solutions designed according to specific water quality characteristics.
Pretreatment is particularly critical in industrial wastewater treatment, including unit operations such as neutralization regulation, chemical precipitation, and air flotation, aiming to remove specific pollutants and create conditions for subsequent treatment. For high-concentration organic wastewater, anaerobic biological treatment technology can effectively degrade organic matter while recovering biogas energy.
Advanced oxidation technology plays an important role in treating refractory industrial wastewater, thoroughly decomposing organic pollutants through generated hydroxyl radicals. Membrane separation technologies including microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, and reverse osmosis enable advanced removal of dissolved salts and trace pollutants. Evaporation crystallization technology is used for high-salinity wastewater treatment, achieving water resource recovery and useful substance reclamation.
Domestic sewage treatment tends to adopt standardized, scaled technical routes, focusing on process stability and energy economy. Industrial wastewater treatment, however, requires targeted technology combinations based on wastewater characteristics, emphasizing treatment efficiency and removal effectiveness of specific pollutants.
In process design, domestic sewage treatment typically prioritizes optimization of biological treatment technologies, while industrial wastewater treatment places greater emphasis on reasonable combination of physical-chemical and biological treatments. Both technical routes are developing toward resource recovery and energy utilization, though industrial wastewater treatment holds greater potential for useful substance reclamation.
Knowing the technical details of these two water treatment methods helps you choose the best treatment options for your needs, which will save you the most money while still being effective. Contact Yuwei Filtration for your specific solution now.
