(469f) Modeling and Estimating Chemical Releases from Industrial Wastewater Transfers to Publicly Owned Treatment Works

Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTWs) safeguard human and environmental health through wastewater management, yet the presence of industrial pollutants can drastically reduce the treatment efficiency. Several POTW modeling approaches have been developed to aid engineers and decision-makers in predicting the fate of chemical contaminants throughout the treatment process. However, these developments focus their attention on designing and modeling the wastewater organic content treatment and achieving effluent water quality criteria without considering potential air, land, and water releases of chemicals of concerns from industrial wastewater transfers. Therefore, this research effort proposes a process system engineering (PSE) approach to track and predict the fate of industrial wastewater contaminants within POTWs while supplying a standardized foundation that serves as a “benchmark” for predicting potential environmental releases, occupational exposure routes, and aid chemical risk assessment studies. The model captures interactions between chemicals of concern and individual process units across wastewater treatment operations, allowing for the estimation of chemical partitioning across unit operations such as sedimentation, biological treatment, adsorption, aerobic, and anaerobic equipment. Preliminary results for calculated chemical partitions to gas, liquid, and solid phases showed accurate predictions aligning with established benchmarks, literature studies, and operational data. The capability of this model to estimate contaminant partitions can provide risk evaluators with actionable information to calculate potential environmental and human health impacts and Environmental Justice (EJ) indexes affected by industrial wastewater releases.