CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS VOL. 63, 2018 A publication of The Italian Association of Chemical Engineering Online at www.aidic.it/cet Guest Editors: Jeng Shiun Lim, Wai Shin Ho, Jiří J. Klemeš Copyright © 2018, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l. ISBN 978-88-95608-61-7; ISSN 2283-9216 Characteristics of the Effluent Wastewater in Sewage Treatment Plants of Malaysian Urban Areas Ali Hussein Sabeen a , Norzita Ngadi a, *, Zainura Zainon Noor a,b , Ademola Bolanle Raheem a , Farid Agouillal c , Abubaker Ali Mohammed a , Bala Isah Abdulkarim a a Faculty of Chemical and Energy Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia b Research Unit on Analyses and Technological Development in Environment (URADTE), University Teknologi Malaysia. c Centre de Recherché Scientifique et Technique en Analyses Physicochimiques (CRAPC), Tipaza, Algeria. norzita@cheme.utm.my Recently, a lot of domestic wastewater is being generated due to the rise in the population in most urban areas in Malaysia. This implies that more contaminations are being produced which are likely to affect human health. The purpose of this research was to analyze the level of contaminants in the final treated wastewater from the sewage treatment plants in Malaysian urban areas and compare it with Malaysian standard A and B effluent discharged. The specimens used for the analysis were obtained from three wastewater sewage treatment plants in Johor (A), Kuala Lumpur (B), and Penang(C). Specimens were examined using chemical oxygen demand (COD) Vials, Nitrate Nitrogen ammonia vial, and total Phosphorus vial. The Hach DR 5000 UV-V Laboratory Spectrophotometer was used to measure the amount of COD, Nitrate, Nitrate, and Phosphorus. Also, the pH, turbidity, and BOD5 were done utilizing dissolved Oxygen machine and Lovibond Turbidity Meters. The level of BOD, COD were treated well and discharged according to the used standards. The findings revealed that phosphorus in plant c with 12 mg/L in February, Nitrate in plant A 22 mg/L in January, Nitrite in plant A with 18.2 mg/L in February, 19.4 mg/L in February in plant B and16 mg/L in February were found little greater than the prescribed effluent standard of Malaysian wastewater. It was recommended that the final treated water should be frequently and thoroughly treated for the purpose of reusing it for secondary intent. This study has important implications for protecting human health and the environment by identifying the effluent sewer treatment plant that has no proper treatment capability to produce water that is fit for domestic and irrigation purpose. 1. Introduction Sewage treatment is described as a means of extracting the pollutants from sewage to get a product that can be reused or released to the environment (Abdel-Raouf, 2012).Conventional activated sludge is a system that is used for treating wastewater and thus it is used to treat domestic wastewater mostly where the sewage was created (Mc Carty et al., 2011). The sewage wastewater is a complicated model that has many discrete chemical features (Roehrdanz et al., 2017). These features are concentrations of COD, BOD, Nitrogen, phosphorus, Nitrite, and Nitrate which are immense, huge conductivity (which is as a result of huge dissolved solids), with pH that ranges between 7 and 8 (Li et al., 2013). Operating situations and procedures that are performed have an effect on the features and amount of the by-products and the formed waste. The characteristics and the quality differ both in domestic and industry waste with the help of the waste water (Ensink et al., 2007). The formation of the wastewater that is gotten from the same industry as well differs hugely from day to day (Rou et al., 2011). The best system to cure the rising outflow of the domestic wastewater in the urban areas and tropical regions globally is using the wastewater stabilization pond. The sequencing batch SBR reactor is recognized as a type of the activated sludge process which used for the wastewater treatment (Yeruva et al., 2015). It is used to treat sewage wastewater as well as the output from digested anaerobic. Besides, it is used for mechanical biological treatment facilities in batches. The oxygen dissolving method in the combined wastewater and activated sludge is used to minimize the organic matter represented by BOD and COD (Gonzalez et al., 2015). The plants that are used for the wastewater treatment are implemented as an efficient process for treating DOI: 10.3303/CET1863116 Please cite this article as: Ali Hussein Sabeen, Norzita Ngadi, Zainura Zainon Noor, Ademola Bolanle Raheem, Farid Agouillal, Abubaker Ali Mohammed, Bala Isah Abdulkarim, 2018, Characteristics of the effluent wastewater in sewage treatment plants of malaysian urban areas, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 63, 691-696 DOI:10.3303/CET1863116 691