Industrial stormwater treatment and reuse: A case study

Stormwater drained from industries has adverse effects on receiving water bodies and sewer systems. Industrial facilities are usually built on large areas of land and receive a high volume of stormwater. Draining industrial stormwater to sewers is a waste of water that can otherwise be re-used in various processes within industries. Many different treatment technologies are studied and applied to minimize the negative effects of stormwater run-off on sewer systems, surface water bodies, and the water cycle in general. This study aims to review the pollutants found in stormwater collected from point sources in industries and evaluate their potential utilization for various on-site applications after proper treatment. Samples were collected from the warehouse of a logistics company during various rain events and parameters including COD, pH, TDS, and TSS were measured. Multiple treatment methods including sedimentation, coagulation, flocculation, sand filtration, and activated carbon filtration were used in a lab-scale experiments to evaluate the treatment efficiencies. It was tested whether stormwater can be brought to a quality that will be suitable for re-use in warehouses of logistics industries for technical purposes. The study showed that after proper treatment, stormwater collected from the warehouse of a logistic company can be brought to a quality suitable for reuse in technical applications.