ABSTRACT
Increasing population has further strained the available scarce water resources worldwide, posing a greater threat to humanity. Further, to meet the rising demands, industrial activities are paced up, resulting in excess effluents having a high concentration of contaminants pumped out into the aquatic environment. Conventional wastewater treatment procedures for wastewater treatment adopted worldwide require higher investment, complex operation and high maintenance. Technological advancements and ongoing research have paved the ways to make the available technologies simpler, practically feasible and cost-effective to a certain extent. This chapter is aimed at giving insights into the development of worldwide used conventional wastewater treatment technologies with time. Physiochemical as well as biological methods of treatment have undergone huge transformations and advancements aiming as many as possible contaminant categories including emerging pollutants, pharmaceutical compounds, heavy metals and dyes. Sufficient literature has been searched upon to explore the developments in these conventional wastewater treatment techniques like membrane filtration, ion exchange, chemical precipitation, electrocoagulation, adsorption and moving bed bioreactors.
