5. Conclusion

We've tried to answer as simply as possible the question: "How do you investigate and pose an industrial wastewater problem?

The foregoing is obviously not intended to demonstrate that the problem of effluent treatment, so complex, is insoluble. It does not, however, hide the fact that the investments required are considerable, and will be judged all the more undesirable for being so unproductive. It is therefore essential that they be kept to a minimum, which implies a prior rational study.

We believe that solving industrial water pollution problems involves intervening at various stages, i.e. pollution generation at the industrial process level, effluent collection, treatment and disposal of the resulting waste, and that the treatment process chosen must be the result of a technico-economic optimization of the collection-treatment-sludge...