The treatment of industrial wastewater may involve specialized trickling filters which use plastic media and high flow rates. Wastewaters from a variety of industrial processes have been treated in trickling filters. Such industrial wastewater trickling filters consist of two types:
* Large tanks or concrete enclosures filled with plastic packing or other media.
* Vertical towers filled with plastic packing or other media.
The availability of inexpensive plastic tower packings has led to their use as trickling filter beds in tall towers, some as high as 20 meters. As early as the 1960s, such towers were in use at: the Great Northern Oil's Pine Bend Refinery in Minnesota; the Cities Service Oil Company Trafalgar Refinery in Oakville, Ontario and at a kraft paper mill.
The treated water effluent from industrial wastewater trickling filters is typically processed in a clarifier to remove the sludge that sloughs off the microbial slime layer attached to the trickling filter media as for other trickling filter applications.
Some of the latest trickle filter technology involves aerated biofilters of plastic media in vessels using blowers to inject air at the bottom of the vessels, with either downflow or upflow of the wastewater.