Aerobic wastewater treatment is used to polish industrial wastewater pre-treated by anaerobic processes. This guarantees that the wastewater is fully degraded and can be carefully send out which agrees with the strict environmental regulations.

It is typically used as a 2nd wastewater treatment process after rough containments been filtered out. Aerobic treatment is efficient to take out organic contaminants from heavily organic-laden wastes and it is useful for industries like food, beverage, chemical and municipal.

The organic contaminants these microorganisms decomposed are often measured in biological oxygen demand (BOD) which describe the amount of dissolved oxygen needed by aerobic organisms to break down organic matter into smaller molecules.

Aerobic wastewater treatments must be provided with oxygen because the biomass require oxygen. When installing wastewater treatment ponds or include a set of mechanical aeration device to introduce oxygen into the biomass.

It depends on the chemical composition of the wastewater in relation to the effluent requirements, a biological wastewater treatment system might be composed of various processes and several types of microorganisms. They need special operational procedures that depend on the environment needed to keep biomass growth rates optimal for the microbial populations.