Chemical Characteristics

The chemical compounds of wastewater characterization are most important with respect to effective treatment. Identification of the chemical components and their concentrations are used as a measure of wastewater quality. Domestic and industrial wastewaters contain a variety of organic and inorganic chemicals. The principal chemical components in sewage wastewater are carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and urea. The urea in wastewater is largely from an organic compound, urine, which is the chief constituent forming large quantities of nitrogenous mat­ter (Rawat et al., 2011) via rapid decomposition. Organic chemicals, which are mainly composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and other components such as sulfur, phosphorous, iron, ammonia, proteins, fats, lignin, soaps, oils, and other synthetic organic chemicals that are readily biodegradable and their decomposi­tion products, are found in the system. The physico-chemical parameters in waste­water, such as total dissolved solids (TDS), of the organic chemical characteristics involve interactions of pH, alkaline minerals, and other nutrients. These are related to the solvent capabilities of wastewater (Drinan and Whiting, 2001). Some of the common inorganic chemicals compounds present in wastewater are nitrogen, sulfur, chloride, phosphorus, irons, hydrogen, and trace amounts of heavy metals (Muttamara, 1996).