ABSTRACT
Sewage or domestic wastewater is mostly made up of human waste like feces and urine from the toilet, lavatory basins, and urinals. It also includes wastewater from laundry, cooking, washing dishes, and other household tasks. When designing a sewage treatment plant, it is critical to consider both the volume and the quality of the sewage. Hence, this chapter discusses sewage generation from different countries and the characteristics of the sewage generated. It is challenging to define separately each and every compound present in sewage, which contains several hundreds of different compounds. As a consequence of this, it is typically defined by a few sets of standard parameters. It is imperative to have a solid understanding of the physicochemical parameters, such as the pH of the wastewater, the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), the chemical oxygen demand (COD), the nitrogen content, and the solids content, in order to determine the type of treatment required. In light of this, the following chapter explains the significance of these parameters in the context of wastewater treatment and the standard methodologies involved in their respective analysis.
