Dear Maya, Regarding ...

Dear Maya,

Regarding Industrial Wastewater Effluent Quality which reflects that you do not have any WWTP at the moment (lets assume) then you need to do the following; 

Cleaner Production Planning:

1) You need to opt for the chemicals in processing which are environmental friendly or less harmful to environment

2) Minimize/controlled utilization of Fresh Water in Process which in result generate less wastewater

3) Use 80 / 20 Principal, check the main processes where the water consumption is highest, and try to focus on those processes only so improvement is significant. People does mistakes they go for wash room taps or other small things.

4) Segregation (if possible as this is the most difficult task in any running industry to segregate most polluted streams from fairly clean/or low polluted streams). 

5) Segregation will enable you to decide if some of the most polluted streams if could be onsite treatment or reuse (like in textile industry mercerize is separated and recovered by Caustic Recovery Plants), low polluted or fairly clean wastewater can be reused (like in textile industry reuse of last rinsing baths etc.). These all will enable you to have less wastewater at the end of the pipe.

Once you are done with Cleaner Production Planning/Options; then there must be inevitable wastewater coming out of the factory.

Now if you are looking for a good Treatment Options:

Treatment Technologies depends upon many criteria like incoming pollution loads, space available, energy requirement, end use of the treated wastewater etc. The designer could offer you a good treatment scheme depending upon your requirement and your constraints and with technological limitations as well.

1) if you have plenty space available like Sugar Industries have far bigger space available, then facultative ponds, vertically constructed wet lands are the options to go for, low energy, cheaper solution , good output.

2) if space is a constraint, then you need to go for Physico-Chemical and Biological Treatment (in some cases, Anaerobic Treatment as well).

Improving the Effluent Quality from your existing Treatment Plant:

For this one needs to know your treatment scheme existing, what effluent quality you are having and what is your target, what inlet quality you are having and how could you improve it.

However, there could be some open solution;

If you have gravity settling, then adding Lamella Sheets or Tube Settlers could improve further the settling

adding post filtration (sand filter and/carbon filter after secondary clarifier) may give better results

There could be more improvement techniques but needs further data to suggest you the right solution.

Hope this could be a comprehensive answer to your question.