Best Books on Water and Wastewater Treatment Engineering
Water treatment is one subject taught as two: making raw water safe to drink, and making sewage safe to return to a river. They share a chemistry and a microbiology and almost nothing else, so this path builds the shared foundation first and then splits. It opens with two books of narrative journalism that make the stakes concrete and one operator's handbook that shows what a plant physically is, then works through environmental engineering fundamentals, then aquatic chemistry and microbiology, and only then the design references. The design stages assume calculus, a course in fluid mechanics and general chemistry; be warned that these texts are long-lived and heavily revised, and several of our catalogue records are early editions of books now several editions on.
What a treatment plant is, and why it matters
BeginnerUnderstand the water system you already depend on — where it came from, what it costs, and what a plant does unit by unit — without needing any engineering background.
▸ Study plan for this stage
Pace: Six to eight weeks for 1,344 pages, and nothing in this stage assumes any engineering background. Fishman's The big thirst is 388 pages of narrative journalism and reads at 30-40 pages an evening; take it first because it establishes why any of the engineering that follows is worth doing. Sedlak's W
- The conventional drinking water train: coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, filtration, disinfection
- The conventional wastewater train: screening, grit removal, primary settling, biological treatment, secondary clarification, disinfection, sludge handling
- Why the two trains share a chemistry and a microbiology and almost nothing else
- The four historical revolutions in urban water that Sedlak organises his book around
- Water as an economic and political object — pricing, allocation, and who bears the cost
- What an operator actually monitors day to day, and which of those measurements a designer sets
- Potable reuse, and why it is a treatment problem and a public acceptance problem at once
- Trace a litre of water from source to tap and back to a river, naming every unit process it passes through in order
- What are Sedlak's four revolutions, and what problem did each solve that the previous one created or ignored?
- Why does a wastewater plant need both a primary clarifier and a secondary clarifier, and what is settling in each?
- What does an operator do when the activated sludge starts bulking, and why does Spellman treat it as a recurring rather than an exceptional event?
- What makes water pricing politically difficult in a way that electricity pricing is not, according to Fishman?
- Find your own water utility's annual water quality report, and identify for each reported parameter which unit process in Spellman's descriptions is responsible for controlling it
- Sketch the flow diagram of a conventional drinking water plant and a conventional wastewater plant from memory, then check both against Spellman and mark what you omitted
- Arrange a plant tour if you can, or find a virtual one, and match each physical structure you see to the process description in Spellman
- Take Sedlak's chronology and place your own city's water and sewage infrastructure on it — which revolution is your system built to, and what would the next one require?
- Read one of Fishman's case studies of a water crisis and write down which failure was technical, which was economic and which was political
Next up: You now know what each tank is for; the next stage is the mass balance and reactor theory that says how big it has to be.
The best popular account of water as an economic and political object rather than a chemical one, and the right first book because it establishes why any of the engineering that follows is worth doing. No technical prerequisites.
Sedlak is an environmental engineer, and this is the history of urban water systems in four revolutions — Roman aqueducts, sand filtration and chlorination, sewage treatment, and the reuse era now beginning. Read it second: it gives you the chronology into which every unit process below slots.
The operator-level entry: what each tank, pump and basin actually does, written for people who run plants rather than design them. Placed before the theory deliberately — knowing the hardware makes the design equations far easier to motivate. Our record is the first edition of a book now much expanded.
The environmental engineering foundation
IntermediateWork with mass balances, reactor kinetics, hydraulics and water quality standards, and be able to state what a given unit process is supposed to remove and to what level.
▸ Study plan for this stage
Pace: Four to six months for 1,824 pages, and this is where calculus, fluid mechanics and general chemistry become genuine prerequisites rather than nice to have. Davis and Cornwell's Introduction to environmental engineering is 964 pages and is the natural on-ramp — materials balances, reactor theory, hy
- Materials balance on a control volume, at steady state and unsteady state, with and without reaction
- Reactor models: batch, plug flow, completely mixed, and cascades of the last
- Reaction kinetics — zero, first and second order — and the residence time each demands
- Hydraulic retention time, solids retention time, and why they are different numbers
- Open channel and pressure hydraulics as they appear in a plant: weirs, launders, headloss through a filter
- Water quality standards and discharge permits, and the difference between a health-based and a technology-based limit
- Water demand forecasting and the peaking factors a plant must be sized for
- Collection and distribution system hydraulics, and the constraints they impose on plant siting
- For a first-order reaction, how much larger must a completely mixed reactor be than a plug flow reactor for the same removal, and why?
- Write a mass balance for a clarifier and identify every term you would need to measure to close it
- What is the difference between hydraulic retention time and solids retention time, and which one controls the microbial community?
- How does a technology-based effluent limit differ from a water quality-based one in origin and in what it obliges you to build?
- What peaking factor would you design a distribution system for, and how does that differ from what you design the treatment plant for?
- How does a tracer study reveal short-circuiting in a basin, and what does the resulting residence time distribution look like?
- Work Davis and Cornwell's mass balance problems until you can set one up for an unfamiliar process without a template
- Compute the required volume for a specified removal under plug flow and completely mixed assumptions for the same first-order reaction, and plot the ratio against removal fraction
- Design a tracer study for a real basin: choose the tracer, the injection mode, and the sampling schedule, and state what a long tail in the response would tell you
- Size a rapid sand filter for a given flow using Davis and Cornwell's loading rates, and compute the headloss development to backwash
- Take a real discharge permit and classify each limit as health-based or technology-based, then identify the unit process responsible for meeting it
Next up: You can now size a reactor; the next stage tells you what will actually happen inside it chemically and biologically, which is what decides whether the size is right.
Davis and Cornwell is the standard undergraduate survey and the natural on-ramp: materials balances, reactor theory, hydraulics and an overview of both water and wastewater treatment in one volume. Read it before either design text. Our record is an early edition; buy current.
The systems view the design books assume: sources, demand, distribution networks, collection systems and receiving-water impacts — the pipes on either side of the plant. Viessman and Hammer's text is now in a much later edition than our 1980s record.
The chemistry and microbiology underneath
BeginnerPredict what a chemical addition will do — pH, alkalinity, precipitation, disinfection by-products — and understand the microbial communities that do the work in biological treatment.
▸ Study plan for this stage
Pace: Five to seven months for 1,964 pages, and this is the most demanding stage on the path in the sense that it is the least visual — nothing here is a tank. Sawyer's Chemistry for environmental engineering and science is 752 pages and is the bridge from general chemistry to what a treatment engineer ne
- The carbonate system, alkalinity, and buffer intensity
- Log-concentration diagrams as the working tool for equilibrium problems
- Precipitation and solubility, and the chemistry of lime softening and phosphorus removal
- Complexation and its effect on metal solubility and on coagulant behaviour
- Redox chemistry, pE-pH diagrams, and the sequence of terminal electron acceptors
- Disinfection chemistry: free and combined chlorine, breakpoint, and disinfection by-product formation
- BOD, COD and TOC as three different answers to the same question, and what each measures
- The activated sludge microbial community: floc formers, filaments, nitrifiers, denitrifiers and phosphorus accumulating organisms
- Why does adding lime to soften water first raise and then lower the pH, and where does the carbonate system explain it?
- Draw the breakpoint chlorination curve and explain each segment in terms of the nitrogen chemistry
- What is alkalinity actually measuring, and why does a nitrifying plant consume it?
- Which filamentous organisms cause bulking, what selects for them, and what does Bitton say the operational fix is?
- In what order are terminal electron acceptors consumed as a system goes anoxic, and what does that sequence predict about a stratified basin?
- Why do BOD and COD differ for the same sample, and what does the ratio tell you about treatability?
- Construct a log-concentration diagram for the carbonate system by hand following Benjamin, and use it to find the pH of a specified water
- Compute the lime and soda ash doses for softening a real raw water analysis, and check the residual hardness against Sawyer's method
- Work a breakpoint chlorination calculation for a water with a known ammonia concentration and predict the chlorine dose to reach free residual
- Run or read a jar test procedure from Sawyer, and relate the optimum coagulant dose to the alkalinity consumed
- Take a microscope image or description of bulking sludge from Bitton, identify the filament type, and trace back through his chapters to the operating condition that selected for it
- Compute a phosphorus removal dose by chemical precipitation using Benjamin's solubility relations, and compare it with the biological removal Bitton describes
Next up: Chemistry and microbiology are the two halves the design references assume; from here the path splits, and the drinking water side comes first.
The classic bridge from general chemistry to what a treatment engineer needs: alkalinity, hardness, BOD and COD, nitrogen forms, and the analytical methods behind every number on a discharge permit. Start the stage here.
The rigorous aquatic chemistry text: acid-base systems, complexation, precipitation and redox done properly, with the graphical methods that make equilibrium problems tractable. Harder than Sawyer and worth it. Note that our record's publication year is clearly wrong metadata; the book is Benjamin's, and the second edition is current.
The biological half, and the one most engineering curricula skimp on: what actually lives in activated sludge, why bulking and foaming happen, and how pathogens and indicator organisms behave. Read it before the wastewater design stage, not after.
Drinking water treatment
BeginnerDesign a potable water treatment train — coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, filtration, disinfection, membranes — and size each unit against a real raw water quality and a real standard.
▸ Study plan for this stage
Pace: Six months to a year, and the 4,288-page total is misleading because only one of these three is a book you read. Crittenden, Howe, Hand, Tchobanoglous and Trussell's Principles of water treatment is 672 pages and is the teaching version of the field's big reference by the same authors: the same phys
- Coagulation mechanisms: charge neutralisation versus sweep flocculation, and the coagulant dose diagram
- Flocculation as a velocity gradient problem, and the G value and its product with detention time
- Sedimentation theory, overflow rate, and why plate and tube settlers work
- Granular media filtration: depth filtration mechanisms, headloss development, and backwash design
- Membrane processes — microfiltration through reverse osmosis — and the flux, fouling and recovery tradeoffs
- Disinfection kinetics, CT values, and the regulatory logic that turned them into compliance
- Disinfection by-product formation and the precursor removal strategies that control it
- Corrosion control and distribution system water quality, including the lead and copper problem
- Under what raw water conditions does charge neutralisation beat sweep flocculation, and how would the jar test tell you?
- Derive the overflow rate criterion for an ideal settling basin and state what it assumes about the flow field
- Why does a filter's headloss rise faster than its effluent quality deteriorates, and what does that imply about when to backwash?
- What is a CT value, and why does the required CT for Giardia differ so much from that for viruses?
- How do you reduce disinfection by-products without reducing disinfection, and what are the two main strategies?
- Why is corrosion control a treatment plant decision when the corrosion happens miles away in the distribution system?
- Design a complete conventional treatment train for a specified raw water and flow using Crittenden's Principles of water treatment: coagulant dose, flocculation basin G and detention time, settling basin overflow rate, filter loading rate and disinfection CT
- Look up one of your sized units in the full MWH volume and compare the design procedure there with the shorter book's — note what the reference adds and whether it changes your dimensions
- Compute the CT achieved by your disinfection contactor at winter temperature and check compliance for the pathogen with the strictest requirement
- Use Edzwald's chapters to select a corrosion control strategy for a distribution system with lead service lines, and state the water quality targets it implies
- Size a membrane system for the same raw water, compute the recovery and the concentrate flow, and compare capital and operating implications with the conventional train you designed
Next up: The drinking water side is dominated by physical and chemical processes; the wastewater side is dominated by biology, and that is why the last stage needs a different set of references.
The teaching version of the field's big reference, by the same authors: the same physical and chemical principles at a length a student can finish, with worked design examples. Read this before Crittenden's full volume. The record lists the full author team led by Crittenden.
The definitive drinking water design reference, running to well over a thousand pages: every unit process derived and then designed, with the mass transfer and reactor theory the shorter books assert. Use it as the lookup volume for the rest of your career. Our record is the third edition.
The American Water Works Association's handbook, and the practitioner's counterpart to Crittenden: chapters written by specialists on regulation, source protection, disinfection by-products and corrosion control. The record is the current sixth edition.
Wastewater treatment
BeginnerDesign a wastewater train — primary settling, activated sludge or biofilm processes, nutrient removal, disinfection and sludge handling — and model the biology rather than guess at it.
▸ Study plan for this stage
Pace: Six months to a year for 4,150 pages, and the same discipline applies as in the previous stage: read one, consult two. Davis's Water and Wastewater Engineering is 1,296 pages and is the design-course text with a consistent method and worked examples throughout — the bridge between the previous stage
- Activated sludge fundamentals: food-to-microorganism ratio, mixed liquor suspended solids, and solids retention time as the master variable
- Secondary clarifier design and the solids flux theory that couples it to the aeration basin
- Nitrification and denitrification: the kinetics, the alkalinity consumption, and the anoxic zone
- Biological phosphorus removal and the anaerobic selector that makes it work
- Attached growth processes — trickling filters, rotating biological contactors, moving bed reactors — and where they beat suspended growth
- Membrane bioreactors and the tradeoff of footprint against energy and fouling
- Sludge handling: thickening, stabilisation, anaerobic digestion, dewatering and disposal
- The activated sludge models as a stoichiometric and kinetic framework rather than a set of formulas
- Why is solids retention time the master design variable for activated sludge, and what does raising it do to nitrification, to sludge production and to oxygen demand?
- How does solids flux theory link the clarifier's area to the aeration basin's mixed liquor concentration?
- Why does nitrification consume alkalinity, and what does denitrification give back?
- What conditions does biological phosphorus removal require, and what happens to it when the anaerobic zone receives nitrate?
- When would you choose an attached growth process over activated sludge, and what does the choice cost in effluent quality?
- What does an activated sludge model add over the empirical design equations in Metcalf and Eddy, and when is that addition worth the calibration effort?
- Design a complete activated sludge plant for a specified influent and effluent standard using Davis: basin volume, solids retention time, oxygen requirement, return sludge rate and clarifier area
- Check every one of your sized units against the corresponding procedure in Metcalf and Eddy and record where the two differ and why
- Compute the alkalinity balance across your nitrifying plant and determine whether supplemental alkalinity is needed
- Add an anoxic zone to your design, size it for a target total nitrogen, and compute the internal recycle ratio required
- Set up a simple activated sludge model from Grady's stoichiometry for carbon oxidation and nitrification, and simulate the response to a doubled influent load
- Size the anaerobic digester for the sludge your plant produces, compute the biogas yield, and see how much of the plant's own energy demand it covers
Next up: This is the end of the path: from here the natural continuations are process simulation software calibrated against Grady's models, the potable reuse literature Sedlak pointed at in stage one, and the regulatory and asset management side that decides which of your designs actually gets built.
Davis's design-course text, and the best single book that covers both halves at design depth with a consistent method and worked examples throughout. The bridge between the previous stage and this one; our record is a recent edition.
Metcalf and Eddy, the field's reference work, and the book every wastewater design in the English-speaking world is checked against. Our record is the fourth edition and its display title is truncated to Wastewater engineering; the current edition is subtitled Treatment and Resource Recovery and adds substantial material on energy and nutrient recovery, so buy it rather than this one.
The deepest treatment of the biology as a modelling problem: stoichiometry, kinetics, and the activated sludge models that plant simulators implement. The last book because it is where the design rules of Metcalf and Eddy come from. The record is an early edition; the third is current.
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