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THE CONCEPT OF WASTEWATER TREATMENT TECHNOLOGIES The technologies of have been developed on the basis of laws of nature development and existence, including those laws, by which natural self-treatment of reservoirs occurs. Every ecosystem could be likened to one mechanism that consumes solar energy and nutrients for work fulfillment. Originally nutrients come from abiotic constituent of the system where in the end they are returned back either as excrements or after death and decomposition of organisms. Thus there is continuous cycle of nutrients in the ecosystem where participate both live (biotic) and inanimate (abiotic) constituents (see Scheme 1). Such cycles are called biogeochemical cycles.
Scheme 1. Energy flow and nutrients cycle in natural ecosystem By the first law of thermodynamics, law of conservation of energy, energy does not appear from nowhere and disappear to nowhere but it is converted from one form to another one. By the second law of thermodynamics, energy is never used for 100 % performing a work because a part of it turns unavoidably to heat. Energy has linear flow in the ecosystems without its reuse. "Work" concept is applied to every process that occurs in the live system starting from the processes at a cell's level such as keeping of electrical gradients at membranes, protein synthesis and ending with the processes at whole organism's level (growth, development, reparation, reproduction). Thus organisms are transformers of energy and every time doing a work energy is consumed but some part of it is lost as heat. In the end all the energy consumed by biotic constituent of the ecosystem disperses as heat. It means that chemical energy is transformed to heat energy. Therefore no accumulation of biomass occurs in the ecosystem because of its constant transformation. Nutrients and energy that provide for life on the Earth are continuously transformed from one form to another in the ecosystems based on trophic interrelations between organisms. This is seen in formation of food chains and nets. Food chain is transfer of energy from green plants (the primary producers) through a sequence of organisms which each eats the one below it in the chain and is eaten by the one above. Thus in grazing food chain (see Scheme 2) green plants (the primary producers) are eaten by herbivores (the primary consumers). These may in turn be eaten by different carnivores. The position an organism occupies in a food chain is known as its trophic level. For example, green plants (which obtain their energy directly from sunlight and transform it to chemical energy in result of photosynthesis) are on the first trophic level, the primary consumers are on the second trophic level, the secondary consumers are on the third level, etc. The consumers need ready organics to consume which they transform in the process of metabolism mineralizing and using for biomass synthesis.
Scheme 2. Energy flow and nutrients cycle Excrements and left organics as well as dead bodies of the organisms form organic matter that is decomposed by saprophytes (bacteria and fungi). The saprophytes are on the first trophic level of detritic food chain. Organisms of the second trophic level are detrivorous as they consume bacteria, fungi and partially decomposed biomass called detritus. So they intensify the process of mineralization. Further carnivores eat detritus-consuming organisms, etc. Thus the organisms of the detritic food chain gradually mineralize organic compounds up to inorganic elements needed for growth and development of the primary producers (green plants). The same process goes at pollutants decomposition - self-treatment of reservoirs.
It is necessary to note that number and biomass of organisms reduces in many times going from one level to the next one of any trophic pyramid (pyramid of grazing or detritic food chain or food chain of organisms treating water). This reduction is clearly reflected by pyramids of number and biomass (see Scheme 3).
Scheme 3. Biomass pyramid of microorganisms participating in self-treatment of reservoirs Design of the plants produced by the technologies of “KOMPLEKT ECOLOGII” reconstructs natural conditions for development of the organisms of all detritic food chain's levels (see Scheme 4) that lead to following consequences:
Scheme 4. Process of mineralization in “KOMPLEKT ECOLOGII” plants. |
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