DelftX starts new edition of free online course on sewage water treatment

Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences of Delft University of Technology starts a new edition of its online course on sewage water treatment on 27 January. The six-weeks course focuses on basic technology for treatment of urban sewage.

The best students - based on results and activity in the forum discussions - will be invited to follow an online course of the MSc-track Water management of the faculty of Civil Engineering at the TU Delft.

Introduction on different process units
This course will introduce the different process units in the treatment chain, including all physical, chemical and biological processes. There will be an emphasis on water quality and the functionality of each unit process within the treatment chain.

After the course one should be able to recognise the process units, describe their function and make simple design calculations on urban sewage treatment plants.

The course ends with an examination.

Six modules
The course consists of 6 modules:
• sewage treatment plant overview
on major pollutants present in the sewage and why we need to treat sewage prior to discharge to surface waters. The functional units will be briefly discussed
• primary treatment
on how coarse material, sand & grit are removed from the sewage and how to design primary clarification tanks
• biological treatment
on the basics of the carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous cycle and how biological processes are used to treat the main pollutants of concern.
• activated sludge process
on design principles of conventional activated sludge processes including the secondary clarifiers and aeration demand of aeration tanks.
• nitrogen and phosphorus removal
on the principles of biological nitrogen removal as well as phosphorus removal by biological and/or chemical means.
• sludge treatment
on the design principles of sludge thickeners, digesters and dewatering facilities for the concentration and stabilisation of excess sewage sludge. Potentials for energy recovery via the produced biogas will be discussed as well as the direct anaerobic treatment of urban sewage in UASB reactors when climate conditions allow.

Water XSeries
The Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences of TU Delft offers the free online course as part of the Water XSeries that also includes an online course on drinking water treatment and an onilne course on the effects of climate change in the water cycle.

Two other online WaterX courses:
• Introduction to drinking water treatment
• Introduction to Water and Climate

TU Delft offers several online courses as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on edX.

EdX is a non-profit platform for online education through which MIT (USA), Harvard (USA) and other universities, make a range of courses accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world, who has access to internet.

This news item was originally published on the website edX.

Also read on this website
• Open online course TU Delft on water treatment starts with 21,000 participants, 13 September 2013

More information
DelftX
www.open.tudelft.nl

Introduction to the treatment of urban sewage by professor Jules van Lier.