Effective water management

• Storage of waste water in buffer tanks 
• Very fast and precise measurement technologies to monitor and control loads
• Monitoring parameters TOC, COD

De-icing of runways and aircrafts is necessary due to safety reasons since ice and snow negatively influence the weight and aerodynamics of an aircraft.

A mixture of chemicals - de-icing agents and thickening agents – is used to keep airports and planes free from ice and snow. These chemicals are mainly:

• Glycol
• Acetates
• Formates

This highly adhesive chemical mixture works like a sponge so that a certain amount of the winter precipitation is absorbed and liquified.
These adhesive characteristics of waste water of de-iced surfaces are the main challenges to monitoring systems:

• Residual traces of previous sample water falsify the results of the current measurement (memory and/or cross-over effects)
• Systems that require filtration and/or are designed with thin sample tubes will require increased maintenance efforts due to clogging and blocking

Main goal is cost-effective water management and discharge. The least expensive way to discharge effluents is into public water bodies. However, the critical values for public discharge are very low:

Example: For the river Rhine (Germany) the discharge regulation stipulates 150 mg/l O₂

Challenges of effluent discharge from airports

• Discharge into municipal WWTP requires stable outlet loads to optimize treatment processes
• Waste water from de-iced surfaces has strongly fluctuating loads
• Extremely high loads of up to 50,000 mg/l C are common