Septic Tank Treatment
Should I use some kind of bacterial treatment in my Septic Tank or Sewage Treatment Plant?
Under normal conditions your waste water system will breed a specific type of bacteria depending on whether you are using a septic tank or a sewage treatment plant.
Just a few words about bacteria – stuff you always wanted to know about!
Bacteria are single-celled organisms, and if there’s sufficient food for them they will continue to grow and divide. Each time a cell divides (roughly every 20-30 minutes) a new generation of bacteria arrives. All this growth and the rate at which it will happen are down to two variables – food and environment.
Microorganisms and their enzyme systems are responsible for the multitude of chemical reactions that occur in the degradation of organic matter. As bacteria metabolize, grow and divide they produce enzymes, which are high molecular weight proteins.
Colonies of bacteria are therefore factories which produce enzymes, and the enzymes manufactured will correspond to the kind of environment (known as the substrate) in which those enzymes will go to work. So the clever thing about how this is all designed is that provided you have the right bacteria to start with (bacteria reproduce but enzymes do not) you get an automatic production of the right enzyme to achieve the biological degradation of any waste material.
This explains a fundamental principle behind sewage treatment plants – they need to be designed so as to take advantage of the bacterial decomposition of organic materials. So there’s a direct correlation to lower operating costs, enhanced capacity and higher quality of effluent from your sewage treatment plant (and even fewer bad odours, which tend to occur when anaerobic bacteria (see below) attain the ascendancy over aerobic ones, and produce hydrogen sulphide gas and other similar smelly by-products in their decomposition) when you get this working properly.
When you consider that the total organic load of either wastewater or sewage is made up of a constantly changing constituent, it’s not easy to degrade simply by the addition of one or even several enzymes. Remember that enzymes are specific catalysts but do not reproduce, so what’s needed is the introduction of an enzyme producing system directly into the sewage, in other words the addition of bacteria – pre-determined in dosage and specific to the ongoing waste reducing activity that is the whole point of a sewage treatment plant.
Currently, the introduction of specifically cultured bacteria would appear to be the most cost-effective and reliable way to achieve the desired outcome. So if you introduce the correct bacteria in the right proportions to the environment, you will be creating much greater potential for more effective treatment of wastewater or sewage – which surely is the aim of any self-respecting sewage treatment plant.
The type of bacteria in a septic tank is normally referred to as anaerobic, in other words this kind of bacteria will breed without needing a lot of oxygen.
Sewage Treatment Plant Bacteria
On the other hand the type of bacteria you will find in a sewage treatment plant is referred to as aerobic bacteria because it needs to be fed oxygen in order to breed.
For those interested in the technicalities of all this, there is another type of bacteria known also ‘facultative’ because it can thrive either with or without oxygen, but for our purposes we will focus on the two kinds referred to above:
Anaerobic Bacteria
Anaerobic bacteria is not so good at breaking down organic substances, but is better at breaking down inorganic solids so septic tanks normally suffer less with blockages.
Aerobic Bacteria
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, aerobic bacteria is much better at breaking down organic solids, withstanding household chemicals and is much more effective at consuming human waste. So, in a typical sewage treatment plant, oxygen is added to improve the functioning of aerobic bacteria which helps them maintain superiority over the anaerobes.