Treatment Efficiency in Wastewater Treatment Plants of the Northern Hungarian Plains Through Quantitative Removal of Physiochemical Indicators and Microbiological Parameters

Polluting discharges are produced at a rate that is inexorably rising in tandem with human activity development. Eutrophication and other matters, such as offensive aquatic life, require wastewater to be treated before being discharged into the environment. Prior releasing into water bodies, the treated waters must to undertake laboratory analysis. For this purpose, an analysis using standard methods was carried out at the Laboratory Waterworks in Debrecen on various samples taken from various wastewater treatment plants (sewage treatment plants) in Hungary. The overall objective of this study was to assess the quality of the effluents from the fourteen (14) wastewater treatment plants and investigate their efficiency by measuring various physicochemical parameters and microbiological parameters as excellent indicators to evaluate the performance of the studied wastewater treatment plants. The microbiological indicator monitored was the heterotrophic count (HPC) by estimating its total number, which provides useful information for the assessment and monitoring of water samples. The determination of physicochemical parameters included biological oxygen demand (BOD5), chemical oxygen demand (COD) and nitrite -N (NO2), ammonia-N (NH3-N), nitrate-N (NO3) total phosphorus (TP), Kjeldahl- Nitrogen (organic N+ammonia-N) (TKN), total inorganic N (TI), total suspended solids (TSS) and total nitrogen (TN). The performance of the wastewater treatment plants examined was checked and the results were conclusive. In the future, solutions should be applied to these wastewater treatment plants and some recommendations are suggested