Assessment of fish scale biosorbent in the treatment of seafood processing plant wastewater

Abstract

AbstractBACKGROUNDWastewater generated from seafood processing plants poses a serious threat to the draining environments. In addition, huge amount of fish scales are discarded as solid waste from seafood processing plants and fish markets. These biowastes can be used as biosorbent in the treatment of wastewaters. In the present work, waste fish scales were employed as biosorbent in order to explore the adsorption capacity of several pollutant parameters such as nutrients, ammonia, biological oxygen demand (BOD) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) in the treatment of seafood processing plant wastewater. The experiment was carried out as batch work under varying biosorbent dosage levels and contact times.RESULTSThe biosorbent treatment showed >70% removal of nitrite, phosphate and BOD. The ammonia and COD were significantly (P < 0.05) reduced with >95% removal at the end of treatment process. Based on the results, the treatment showed best adsorption at 90 min contact time with a biosorbent dosage of 1 g/100 mL in the removal of BOD, COD and ammonia. Other parameters showed maximum reduction at 180 min contact time. Experimental data fitted well with the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models (R2 values ranging between 0.84 and 0.99). All of the data were statistically tested using SPSS v25 software.CONCLUSIONThe results of the present study showed that waste fish scales can be effectively reused as biosorbent in the treatment of organic pollutants from seafood processing plant wastewater. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry (SCI)