A comprehensive index for evaluating and enhancing effective wastewater treatment in two industrial parks in China

Industrial parks have been important to China's rapid economic development. The wastewater generated by these industrial parks tends toward large volumes, varied compositions, high pollutant concentrations, and it generally is toxic and difficult to biodegrade. The abilities of treatment plants to effectively treat industrial wastewater are greatly influenced by the upstream treatment step that occurs at the source in the industrial park. Based on the notion of the water footprint, a wastewater treatment assessment index was developed and tested to evaluate and enhance the centralized wastewater treatment plants of two industrial parks. The treatment performance of a plant in a comprehensive industrial park was compared to that of a chemical industrial park. The former scored significantly higher than the latter. Because of its low scores in the evaluation, the treatment problems of the chemical industrial park were diagnosed and enhancement measures were implemented. After the enhancements were in place, the plant was re-evaluated. Its post-enhancement scores on the index's primary indicator for process advancement and its dependent performance regarding the downstream environment greatly increased, indicating that the wastewater treatment performance had significantly improved. Therefore, the index developed by this study successfully evaluated and determined effective enhancements for wastewater treatment in China's industrial parks, which contributes to industrial wastewater pollution control. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.