水处理专业英语阅读1--Water-Pollution-and-Pollutants

精品文档 1欢迎下载 1 1 WaterWater PollutionPollution andand PollutantsPollutants The relationship between polluted water and disease was firmly established with the cholera epidemic of 1854 in London England Protection of public health the original purpose of pollution control continues to be the primary objective in many areas However preservation of water resources protection of fishing areas and maintenance of recreational waters are additional concerns today Water pollution problems intensified following World War II when dramatic increases in urban density and industrialization occurred Concern over water pollution reached a peak in the mid seventies Water pollution is an imprecise term that reveals nothing about either the type of polluting material or its source The way we deal with the waste problem depends upon whether the contaminants are oxygen demanding algae promoting infectious toxic or simply unsightly Pollution of our water resources can occur directly from sewer outfalls or industrial discharges point sources or indirectly from air pollution or agricultural or urban runoff nonpoint sources Chemically pure water is a collection of H2O molecules nothing else Such a substance is not found in nature not in wild streams or lakes not in clouds or rain not in falling snow nor in the polar ice caps Very pure water can be prepared in the laboratory but only with considerable difficulty Water accepts and holds foreign matter Municipal wastewater also called sewage is a complex mixture containing 精品文档 2欢迎下载 water usually over 99 percent together with organic and inorganic contaminants both suspended and dissolved The concentration of these contaminants is normally very low and is expressed in mg L that is milligrams of contaminant per liter of the mixture This is a weight to volume ratio used to indicate concentrations of constituents in water wastewater industrial wastes and other dilute solutions Microorganisms Microorganisms Wherever there is suitable food sufficient moisture and an appropriate temperature microorganisms will thrive Sewage provides an ideal environment for a vast array of microbes primarily bacteria plus some viruses and protozoa Most of these microorganisms in wastewater are harmless and can be employed in biological processes to convert organic matter to stable end products However sewage may also contain pathogens from the excreta of people with infectious diseases that can be transmitted by contaminated water Waterborne bacterial diseases such as cholera typhoid and tuberculosis viral diseases such as infectious hepatitis and the protozoan caused dysentery while seldom a problem now in developed countries are still a threat where properly treated water is not available for public use Tests for the few pathogens that might be present are difficult and time consuming and standard practice is to test for other more plentiful organiama that are always present in the billions in the intestines of warm blooded animals including humans Solids Solids The total solids organic plus inorganic in wastewater are by definition the residues after the liquid portion has been evaporated and the 精品文档 3欢迎下载 remainder dried to a constant weight at 103 Differentiation between dissolved solids and undissolved that is suspended solids are accomplished by evaporating filtered and unfiltered wastewater samples The difference in weight between the two dried samples indicates the suspended solids content To further categorize the residues they are held at 550 for 15 minutes The ash remaining is considered to represent inorganic solids and the loss of volatile matter to be a measure of the organic content Suspended solids SS and volatile suspended solids VSS are the most useful SS and BOD biochemical oxygen demand are used as measures of wastewater strength and process performance VSS can be an indicator of the organic content of raw wastes and can also provide a measure of the active microbial population in biological processes InorganicInorganic constituents constituents The common inorganic constituents of wastewater include 1 Chlorides and sulphates Normally present in water and in wastes from humans 2 Nitrogen and phosphorous In their various forms organic and inorganic in wastes from humans with additional phosphorous from detergents 3 Carbonates and bicarbonates Normally present in water and wastes as calcium and magnesium salts 4 Toxic substances Arsenic cyanide and heavy metals such as Cd Cr Cu Hg Ph and Zn are toxic inorganics which may be found in industrial wastes In addition to these chemical constituents the concentration of dissolved 精品文档 4欢迎下载 gases especially oxygen and the hydrogen ion concentration expressed as pH are other parameters of interest in wastewater OrganicOrganic matter matter Proteins and carbohydrate constitute 90 percent of the organic matter in domestic sewage The sources of these biodegradable contaminants include excreta and urine from humans food wastes from sinks soil and dirt from bathing washing and laundering plus various soaps detergents and other cleaning products Various parameters are used as a measure of the organic strength of wastewater One method is based on the amount of organic carbon total organic carbon or TOC present in the waste TOC is determined by measuring the amount of CO2 produced when the organic carbon in the sample is oxidized by a strong oxidizer and comparing it with the amount in a standard of known TOC Most of the other common methods are based on the amount of oxygen required to convert the oxidizable material to stable end products Since the oxygen used is proportional to the oxidizable material present it serves as a relative measure of wastewater strength The two methods used most frequently to determine the oxygen requirements of wastewater are the COD and BOD tests The COD or chemical oxygen demand of the wastewater is the measured amount of oxygen needed to chemically oxidize the organics present the BOD or biochemical oxygen demand is the measured amount of oxygen required by acclimated microorganisms to biologically degrade the organic matter in the wastewater 精品文档 5欢迎下载 BOD is the most important parameter in water pollution control It is used as a measure of organic pollution as a basis for estimating the oxygen needed for biological processes and as an indicator of process performance The amount of organic matter in water or wastewater can be measured directly as TOC for example hut this doesn t tell us whether the organics are biodegradable or not To measure the amount of biodegradable organics we use an indirect method in which we measure the amount of oxygen used by a growing microbial population to convert oxidize organic matter to CO2 and H2O in a closed system The oxygen consumed or biochemical oxygen demand BOD is proportional to the organic matter converted and therefore BOD is a relative measure of the biologically degradable organic matter present in the system Because biological oxidation continues indefinitely the test for ultimate BOD has been arbitrarily limited to 20 days when perhaps 95 percent or more of the oxygen requirement has been met Even this period however is too long to make measurement of BOD useful so a five day test BOD5 carried out at 20 has become standard The rate of the BOD reaction depends on the type of waste present and the temperature and is assumed to vary directly with the amount of organic matter organic carbon present 单词表单词表 cholera n 霍乱 evaporate v 蒸发 epidemic n 流行 传染 differentiation n 区分 recreational a 娱乐性的 filter v 过滤 精品文档 6欢迎下载 imprecise a 不精确的 evaporate v 挥发 alga algae n 海藻 藻类 20 20 degree centigrade contaminant n 污染物 categorize vt 分类 contaminate vt 污染 residue n 残渣 infectious a 传染性的 volatile a 挥发性的 unsightly a 难看的 content n 含量 sewer n 下水道 chloride n 氯化物 outfall n 排放口 sulphate n 硫化物 runoff n 排水 流放口 nitrogen n 氮 laboratory n 实验室 phosphorous n 磷 sewage n 污水 废水