Study regarding the determination of specific flows of wastewater in Romania

Mircea-Vlad MUREȘAN, Elena Maria PICĂ

Find on Google Scholar

---

Abstract

This paper intends to inform the scientific and engineering community on the
importance of wastewater treatment plants of small capacity, designed for rural settlements.
By analysing the evolution of Romania’s population by towns, on 1st January 2010, the
weight of urban population was 55.1 %, and the weight of the rural population was 44.9 %
of the total population. The rural environment representing 44.9% of the total population is
grouped into 2860 villages with a degree of connection to wastewater treatment plants of
only 11.21 %. At the moment the design of treatment plants, regardless of the structure and
size of the settlement, is performed in a non-differentiated way, using the same technological
methods for urban and rural areas. The implementation of technical solutions that are use for
urban areas in case of small and very small towns’ claims high investment costs and
especially operational costs, the efficiency of these solutions being unsatisfactory, because
of wrong adoption of sizing parameters, for example, the influent specific flow. From this
paper will result, based on case studies, that the specific flow sizing treatment plants for rural
areas is overrated, much too high, resulting in oversized treatment plants.

---

---