WWTP with membrane technology in Sovetsk Municipality of Kaliningrad region
New wastewater treatment plant in Sovetsk Municipality of Kaliningrad region, applying the membrane technology.
Solution to which problem
Old infrastructure and as result insufficient treatment of wastewater discharging to environment, inability of wastewater to allow quantity and quality requirements.
Technical conditions
The Sovetsk Municipality is one of the biggest cities in the Kaliningrad region, located directly on a transboundary waterbody – Neman river. Like most cities of Kaliningrad region Sovetsk had an old german sewage system (built in 1928), which was not able to allow wastewater treatment. First attempt to build a new wastewater treatment plant was in the 1990s but it wasn't finished.
Implementation
In 2011 in the framework of the National target program on further development of the Kaliningrad region for the period until 2020, the construction of new WWTPs has begun. The feature of the new WWTPs has become the membrane technology of treatment, applied on the plant.
The main advantages of chosing the membrane technology in this case are:
- high efficiency of the treatment
- small site requirement, as the WWTP is located in the city area.
The project capacity of the WWTP is 25 000 m3/day. There are also buffer reservoirs for decreasing the hydraulic load in the cases of peaks.
Generally, wastewater treatment is going through the following steps:
- mechanical treatment (rotary drum grilles, aerated sand traps, and primary radial sumps),
- biological treatment (aero tanks),
- chemical treatment
- deep wastewater treatment on membrane filters.
The implementation period took 2 years for construction and commissioning, and the operation on the new WWTP has started in 2013.
Result
Generally the main result is the effective treatment of wastewaters discharging to the transboundary Neman river. During commissioning the effectiveness of treatment varied from 79,9 % up to 98,4% depending on pollutants.
According to the information received from the last independent research, the WWTP still operates effectively and according to the current legislative requirements (some indicators are provided in the table).
| Pollutant |
Requirement (according Russian legislation) [mg/l] |
Result of the treatment on WWTP [mg/l] |
| BOD5 | 2 | 2 |
| Petrochemical | 0,05 | 0,027 |
| Sulfate ion | 100 | 26,4 |
| Ammonia and ammonium ion | 0,5 | 0,11 |
| Phosphate ion | 0,2 | 0,18 |
| COD | 30 | 26,47 |