2. How is Effluent Treatment Plant so important?

Treatment of waste water generated at various stages of automotive manufacturing process is done with ETP or Effluent Treatment Plant. They treat the water that goes down drains before releasing it back into the environment. ETP involves environment friendly technique for the treatment of effluents from automobile industries so that it can be recycled or reused for another purpose.

The effluents, which are generated from the automobile sectors (like automobile industries, showrooms, service centre) are extremely harmful for the health of humans and animals and thereby creating a big problem to the environment. Hence, installation of effluent treatment plant for automobile industry is a prerequisite.

3. Process Overview of ETP or Effluent Treatment Plant for Automobile Industry:

Effluent Treatment Plant has a great role to play in removing/discharging the contaminated and polluted water to a standard or acceptable level before releasing it back to the natural water sources. Here, you will get to know what are the major processes that are involved in ETP for automobile/automotive industries.

1. Physical process 2. Chemical process and 3. Biological process

ETP for automobile industries follows certain steps during treatment process and are like:
1. Pre-treatment: It involves physical process such as screening or grit chamber to remove floatable solids in raw effluent before they cause damage to pumps and other equipments of the plant. It also consists of oil and grease trap to remove float able oil and grease from automobile effluent.

2. Primary Treatment: Pre-treated wastewater now enters into primary tank which includes chemical process (which involves coagulation, flocculation, and neutralization). Here, heavy solids settle down to the bottom while oil, grease and other lighter solids float to the surface are skimmed off. The settled solids are called as primary sludge and the remaining liquid wastewater is subjected to next treatment level.

3. Secondary Treatment: This treatment involves biological process and removes about 90% of BOD and COD. Biological process can be aerobic or anaerobic depending on the quality of the effluent. But most of the ETP’s use aerated sludge process (aerobic process) for effective treatment of wastewater. It removes dissolved and suspended biological matter.

4. Tertiary Treatment: This treatment is very much important in ETP’s. Because, here disinfection of treated wastewater is done by using chlorine, ozone, UV light. It also removes residual suspended solids which were not removed in previous treatment levels. Finally, quality of the treated effluent from automobile industries are acceptable and suitable for discharge.