The Sonsbeck wastewater treatment plants are used to treat the company’s own production wastewater from the processing of waste oil and used solvents by distillation and to treat industrial wastewater acquired from third parties. The wide spectrum of treatment plants includes the physical treatment of wastewater and sludge containing sediments, the physico-chemical separation of oil and water, emulsion separation and the total vaporisation of wastewater. Based on sources of origin and/or our waste disposal spectrum, the highest proportion here is attributable to organically contaminated wastewater – however, extremely contaminated organic raw wastewater and flashpoint-contaminated wastewater can also be accepted and processed.
The industrial wastewater treated in the Sonsbeck plants is brought to the nearby site in Wesel and, following biological treatment in one of our company plants, released into the Rhine river. Our wastewater biological treatment is an elaborate special process in which specialised bacteria populations are adapted or settled in a number of sequentially connected aerobic fixed-bed reactors. These specialised bacteria populations are able to break down and degrade even high-molecular, persistent hydrocarbon compounds which in conventional wastewater biological treatment merely pass through as ‘inert CODs’. This special process ensures that, even in the case of raw wastewater with high organic contamination, only very minimal residual loads are released into the Rhine.