Vitória Ambiental Engenharia e Tecnologia S.A. is an environmental protection company specializing in the management and disposal of waste, which owns a Industrial Landfill and a Central Waste Management implemented in Serra – Espírito Santo.

In order to receive domestic and industrial effluents with characteristics of high complexity, the Vitória Ambiental began the process to build a modern Industrial Wastewater Treatment Plant (IWWTP) to meet this demand.

 H₂O Engenharia Ltda., engineering and consulting firm with extensive experience in design and operation of treatment plants with great complexity, was contracted to provide services of Basic Engineering, Detailed Engineering, Commissioning and Start Up of this plant.

 The great challenge faced in designing this IWWTP for Vitória Ambiental was to define the technological route to be adopted for the treatment system, because the effluent is partially sludge resulting from drilling for oil offshore. Thus, in order to provide flexibility to the operation the plant was projected by installing two lines for the treatment of industrial effluents. The choice of one or another line will occur depending on the characterization of the effluent at the entrance of the plant.

 The unit operations involved in this plant include the separation of water and oil, chemical precipitation, dissolved air flotation, aerobic biological system of batch type, disinfection with sodium hypochlorite and dewatering of sludge with filter press.

 The partnership between H2O Engineering and Vitória Ambiental was crucial to the success of this venture due to the pioneering character, considering the characteristics of the effluent. The early work was done with the performance of laboratory tests and the starting of the plant was done carefully with microbiological monitoring due to the nature of effluent that has high salinity.