Evaluation of Wastewater Treatment Efficiency at Kribi Port Authority

“Evaluation of the wastewater treatment system efficiency of the port authority of Kribi”
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
The wastewater management is one of the main issue that most developing countries are
going through, particularly Cameroon. In reference to the National Development strategy
(NDS30) the government of Cameroon has fixed a goal to achieve a coverage rate of 60% in
sanitation by 2035. It’s in that spirit that, the Port Authority of Kribi (PAK) which is a futuristic
company, have being equipped with an automatic wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), with
the aim of treating the domestic wastewater produced in the different building that exist within
Port Authority of Kribi, in other to eliminate or to reduce the harmful environmental pollutants
this to avoid that they distort the beauty of the surrounding nature. The WWTP processes is
made of 07 treatment units that is the screening, the oil removal, water adjustment,
acidification/anaerobic hydrolysis, the anoxic digestion/de-nitrification, aerobic bio
composition of organic matter, filtration, sedimentation and disinfection after which the treated
water has the following characteristics; hydrogen potential (pH .) of 6-9, biochemical oxygen
demand (BOD) < 20mg/l, chemical oxygen demand (COD) < 90mg/l, NH3-N <15mg/l and the
total suspended solid (TSS) < 70mg/l before it’s discharge to the nature. About 8 years after it
construction some observations were made during a visit in the WWTP, It was noticed that
certain treatment equipment’s are not more functioning and that the entire WWTP has aged
causing the WWTP not to operate at it full capacity. With the huge increase of the port and the
industrial activities going in the PAK, important amount of sewage are being produced in
addition to previous ones, all of those aspect led us to question on the effective efficiency of
the WWTP of the PAK. The issue of the non-function of certain treatment equipment’s and
the aging of the wastewater treatment plant of PAK has raised the question of how to
evaluate the efficiency of the wastewater treatment system of the Port Authority of Kribi? To
resolve the issue, the study will be structured around the analysis of the current situation and
the proposal of appropriate technical solution for the case of PAK WWTP.
The main objective set within the framework of this work is to assess the technical and
operational efficiency of the wastewater treatment system implemented within the PAK with
the view to proposing sustainable improvement.
From this general objective arise the following specific objectives:
 The identification and description of the wastewater treatment system that exist within
the PAK;

 Analysis of the performance and the identification of the inadequacies of the wastewater
treatment plant;
 The proposal of technical improvement for an efficient and sustainable operation of the
WWTP within the PAK.
The evaluation of the wastewater treatment system efficiency of the PAK fully register in
the option of sanitation, environmental and process engineering. The engineer will be at the
heart of the design, operation, optimization and control of wastewater treatment system which
involve scientific principals and complex techniques. This study will permit the PAK to
minimise its environmental impact there by ensuring the protection of the environment by
avoiding the distort of the different ecosystems, the optimization of the technical and operation
performances of the treatment plant this to permit the identification of it weakness in other to
propose adapted improvement solution. For this study to be well realise the work will be
structure as follow, presentation of the company, chapter 1 literature review, chapter 2 material
and method, chapter 3 result and discussion and general conclusion and prospective.