What is metallurgy? It is the process and technology of extracting metals or metal compounds from minerals, and further processing metals into metallic materials with specified properties through various methods.

Metallurgical industry produces a wide range of products and discharges a large volume of wastewater during production, which is a major cause of water source pollution. For this reason, online water quality monitoring of metallurgical wastewater has become an important task for enterprises.

So What Needs to be Understood Before Monitoring Metallurgical Wastewater?

1.First, it is necessary to understand the main sourcesof such wastewater. For metallurgical wastewater, it can be classified by source, mainly including: flue gas scrubbing wastewater, pickling wastewater, cooling water, slag flushing wastewater, and other wastewater generated from production processes.

2.In addition, attention must be paid to the characteristicsof the wastewater, which mainly have three major features:

· The volume of wastewater generated in metallurgical production is very large;

· The mobility of such wastewater is between that of waste gas and solid waste. It mainly diffuses through surface water flow, thereby causing water body pollution;

· The wastewater has a complex composition, high pollutant concentration, and is difficult to purify, consisting of dissolved substances and suspended solids. The COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand) in the wastewater is very high (which needs to be detected by an online COD analyzerto determine whether it exceeds the standard). It contains a wide variety of heavy metals with high toxicity. Furthermore, the wastewater is acidic and sometimes contains volatile substances, making the treatment process complicated and governance extremely difficult.

To provide an extra layer of protection for the ecological environment and human health, wastewater discharge in all industries must be taken seriously to ensure that wastewater discharged from each outlet meets the required standards. Where possible, wastewater should be recycled rather than discharged.