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NEWS & INSIGHTS

Case Study
JAN 22, 2014
Article by
Omar Malik, Yale F&ES '13

Primary vs. Secondary: Types of

Wastewater Treatment

A sequence of steps is required to ensure wastewater gets treated. Image Credit: Yinan SongWastewater treatment is done in a
series of steps that can have increasing effectiveness and complexity depending on the resources available. The conventional seque

Wastewater treatment is done in a series of steps that can have increasing effectiveness and
complexity depending on the resources available. The conventional sequence goes fromprimary,
secondary, to tertiary treatment (http://water.worldbank.org/shw-resource-guide/infrastructure/menutechnical-options/wastewater-treatment).
Primary treatment involves basic processes to remove suspended solid waste and reduce its
biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) the amount of oxygen microorganisms must consume to
breakdown the organic material present in the wastewater. This, in turn, increases dissolved oxygen,
which isgood for aquatic organisms and food webs
(http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/666611/wastewater-treatment).Primary treatment can
1
reduce BOD by 20 to 30 percent and suspended solids by up to 60 percent.
Secondary treatment uses biological processes to catch the dissolved organic matter missed in primary
treatment. Microbes consume the organic matter as food, converting it to carbon dioxide, water, and
2
energy. While secondary treatment technologies vary, from theactivated sludge process New York City
deploys (http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/wastewater/wwsystem-process.shtml), to constructed
wetland systems, the final phase of each involves an additional settling process to remove more
suspended solids.Secondary treatment can remove up to 85 percent of BOD and total suspended
3
solids.
The highest level of wastewater treatment is tertiary treatment, which is any process that goes beyond
the previous steps and can include using sophisticated technology to further remove contaminants or
specific pollutants. Tertiary treatment is typically used to removephosphorous or nitrogen, which cause
eutrophication (http://water.worldbank.org/shw-resource-guide/infrastructure/menu-technicaloptions/wastewater-treatment).In some cases, treatment plant operators add chlorine as a
disinfectant before discharging the water. All in all, tertiary treatment can remove up to 99 percent of
4
all impurities from sewage, but it is a very expensive process.

Ideally the Wastewater Treatment indicator would showcase more advanced levels of treatment, but
most countries lack the necessary data. The EPIs indicator considers at least primary treatment,
because reported values of overall treatment performance entail going through primary treatment first.
Hopefully, layers of specificity can be added in the future as more refined data becomes available.
1, 2, 3, 4 Flrke, M., personal communication. December 5, 2013.

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