In the mining industry, wastewater needs to be managed properly because wastewater can contain large amounts of heavy metals, acids, alkalis, suspended solids, colour, turbidity, organic and inorganic pollutants.
In a wastewater treatment plant, physical treatment processes remove floating bodies, oil, grease and other foreign matter. Chemical treatment processes involve the precipitation of colloidal and suspended solids as sludge by methods such as sedimentation, neutralization and stabilization. With biological processes, treatment methods such as oxidation pool, activated sludge treatment and trickle filters are used to remove dissolved organic matter. Depending on the desired final water quality, advanced treatment options such as chlorination, reverse osmosis, membrane filtration and electro-deionization can be used to remove inorganic impurities at the molecular level.