Sewage Odour Control – The Singapore Experience

Odour control, biotrickling filter, scrubbers Odour nuisance has become a major environmental issue worldwide with increasing public demand for better control of odorous emissions from municipal wastewater treatment facilities, chicken farms, chemical plants and other industrial works. Odour annoyance affects the population directly and there is a trend that more and more people are becoming less tolerable with obnoxious odour emissions. Bad smell is often regarded as an indicator for possible health risks. In Singapore, much investment has been placed on the prevention of nuisance odour emissions from all the public-owned wastewater treatment plants and continuing research has been put into the development of better and more cost-effective odour control procedures. The local authorities have invested significantly in covering up their existing waste treatment process units and treating all captured sewage air by a variety of technologies such as chemical scrubbers and activated carbon towers. Recently, a new biotrickling filter technology was developed and trial tested at a local wastewater plant and results from the past 3 years of operation indicate an extremely cost-effective biological way of treating sewage odour. Singapore’s odour control experience from the use of the traditional chemical and activated carbon systems to this latest biotrickling filter technology is discussed and presented here