Industrial Pretreatment Operations: Operator Fundamentals
This guide is pitched at the entry rung of an industrial wastewater ladder. At this level the
emphasis is on knowing what each unit does, performing the routine reliably, taking readings that
can be trusted, and recognising the situations that must be escalated rather than solved alone.
What your facility is doing, in one paragraph
Your plant exists to take the pollutants your production process puts into water out of that
water before it leaves the site, so that the receiving sewer, the treatment works at the end of
it, and the people who work in both are not harmed. Every unit you operate does one of four
things: it evens out the flow (equalization), it changes the chemistry so a dissolved
pollutant becomes a solid or a harmless compound (neutralisation, precipitation, oxidation,
reduction), it separates