Water Treatment Engineer designs, monitors and controls the process that takes untreated water from rivers, sea, tap water, lake, Borehole / Deepwell or ground water into the treatment plant accordingly. In fact, most of countries they do not have Water Treatment Engineer Bachelor Degree in universities. Mostly, mechanical engineers, civil engineers, chemical engineers or environmental engineers work in this field specializing in water treatment.
What Does a Water Treatment Engineer Do?
Water treatment engineers have a number of duties, and their exact tasks will depend on what area of water treatment they work in. Common duties for these professionals include:
- Designing engineering solutions that protect or prevent flood damage.
- Overseeing daily or weekly testing of a water treatment plant, city or county’s water supply to ensure it’s safe to use and drink.
- Advising government agencies or specific industries on environmental standards and policies.
- Managing or coordinating environmental protection projects and programs.
- Assessing the current or potential impact that land use projects will have on the environment.
- Creating and presenting environmental compliance training to companies or communities.
- Inspecting municipal or industrial facilities to ensure operational safety and effectiveness and that the programs being used are in compliance with environmental regulations.
- Creating programs that help to conserve or manage natural resources.
- Creating specific safety protocols for sites, such as spill contingency plans for getting rid of or moving waste.
Also, nowadays, Water Treatment Engineers are working as Technical Sales Person. They visited or meeting with potential customers and explain them how they can solve their water problem fit to their business and demand.
Water needs are becoming more and more important accordingly. So, countries, cities and companies need high quality and experienced water treatment engineers for their water treatment facilities. Also, wastewater treatment is important field in water industry.
What Skills are Required for Water Treatment Engineers?
Key skills for water engineers:
- Excellent analytical skills
- Teamworking skills
- Problem-solving skills
- Good time management
- IT skills
- Communication skills
- The ability to demonstrate a genuine knowledge and interest of the water industry and environmental issues.
Most of industrial water application, first done at computer. Therefore, water treatment engineer works with CAD Technicians, or he has to know how to use designing software like Auto-Cad, SolidWorks.
Water Treatment Engineer include Mechanical Engineer BsC., Chemical Engineer B.Sc., Civil Engineer B.Sc.., Environmental Engineer B.Sc. accordingly.
How Much Is a Water Treatment Engineer Salary?
As of Feb 6, 2023, the average annual pay for a Water Treatment Engineer in the United States is $74,718 a year.
Just in case you need a simple salary calculator, that works out to be approximately $35.92 an hour. This is the equivalent of $1,436/week or $6,226/month.
Of course, every country is different. In China, the average annual Water Treatment Engineer Salary is 300,000RMB. But, this value can be more or less. Because new graduated Water Treatment Engineer Salary level is around 6,000 to 8,000RMB per month. If Water Treatment Engineer has experience on industrial water treatment and wastewater treatment salary can be change a lot accordingly. Hence, in market water treatment engineer jobs becomes more popular.
Water Engineer Qualifications
Although this area of work is open to all graduates from relevant engineering and sciences courses, a degree in mechanical engineering, chemical engineering civil engineering and environmental engineering may improve your chances. So, most preferred degrees that may be useful include:
- Biochemistry
- Chemical/process engineering
- Environmental engineering
- Environmental science – physical
- Civil Engineering
- Geology
- Geophysics/geotechnology
- Mechanical engineering
- Physical geography.
What Is the Responsibilities of a Water Treatment Engineer?
As a water engineer, you’ll need to:
- Design overall schemes, such as sewer improvement schemes or flood defense programs, and associated structures, such as pumping stations, pipework and earthworks (the scale of the design may range from an initial outline to a full, detailed design)
- Prepare tender documents as a basis for construction.
- Review technical submissions
- Liaise with various bodies and individuals, including local authorities, government agencies, clients, contractors, residents, suppliers, technical experts and other consultants
- Work collaboratively with other businesses
- Support other project managers and directors within the business and across the wider market
- Keep up to date with environmental matters, and be aware of policy and developments in this area
- Present technical data or project results to both technical and non-technical clients and colleagues
- Monitor the progress of projects from beginning to end – from design through to construction and handover – or supervise one section of a large project
- Control budgets at project level
- Administer contracts and ensure that work is completed to deadline
- Supervise the operation and maintenance of water and sewerage infrastructure
- Use computer simulations to analyse, for example, potential dam failure
- Devise flood defence strategies, perhaps including river and flood plain modelling, economic studies and consultation with affected people
- Monitor flood levels at times of high risk
- Manage staff, including other engineers, technicians and site workers
- Maintain and expand the portfolio of clients by developing professional relationships that lead to secure repeat business.
Water Treatment Universities for Engineering
Where to go if you want to study water science and technology.
Meanwhile, there are very few universities offering full BSc or MSc full courses on water treatment, water purification, and any other water technology related topic. Most universities offer water treatment subjects or classes that may be selected in your study program for chemistry, biology, environmental engineering or civil engineering students accordingly. Possibly, the ideal background education for a water treatment engineer would be a BSc or BAS in Chemistry, with a focus on process chemistry and optional courses in biochemistry or microbiology.
Water treatment requires a solid knowledge base of chemical reactions (stoichiometry, oxidation), of process systems (heat exchangers, extraction, separation) and of disinfection (microorganisms). As a follow-up a specialization in water and wastewater purification technologies (MSc course) would be ideal. At this level, water treatment technologies, sanitary engineering, environmental technology, and (environmental) chemistry would be the focus areas. In general, we recommend not focusing too much on actual water management (integrated flood management, etc.), or hydrology. Below some universities are listed offering these or related courses, for different countries.
- Wageningen University (NL)
- Technical University Delft (TU Delft, NL)
- Cranfield University (UK)
- Germany – The University of Bremen
- Germany – The University of Hannover (Leibniz)
- Germany – The University of Kassel
- Germany – The University of Siegen
- USA – Colorado University
- USA – Stanford University.
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