Abstract
Pharmaceutical sludge is considered as a hazardous material with high treatment and disposal costs. In the present study, the catalytic wet oxidation (CWO) of pharmaceutical sludge by CuO-CeO2/γ-Al2O3 as the catalyst was investigated. The catalyst was prepared by traditional wet impregnation. The catalyst was characterized using X-ray Powder Diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). CWO was performed in an experimental batch reactor. Several parameters that could affect the catalytic degradation efficiency, including catalyst dose, temperature, time, oxygen pressure and pH, were investigated. Under optimum conditions, the highest removal rate of volatile suspended solids (VSS) was 87.3% and was achieved at 260°C for 60 min with an oxygen pressure of 1.0 MPa and 10 g/L of catalyst. At the same time, the chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal rate reached as high as 72.6%. This work implies that catalytic wet oxidation is a promising method for the highly efficient degradation of pharmaceutical sludge.
Highlights
Large volumes of pharmaceutical sludge are produced from pharmaceutical wastewater plants, and they pose containing high environmental risk because of the hazardous and refractory organic pollutants contained in the sludge [1, 2]
Since the composition of the synthetic pharmaceutical wastewater is very complex, chemical oxygen demand (COD) was used to assess the treatment efficiency in this study, which was measured by the potassium dichromate oxidation method (Hach Heating System, Hach Corporation, USA)
The removal rate of COD and volatile suspended solids (VSS) reached 69.3% and 86.8%, respectively, which was an increase of 18% and 5% compared with that without the catalyst
Summary
Large volumes of pharmaceutical sludge are produced from pharmaceutical wastewater plants, and they pose containing high environmental risk because of the hazardous and refractory organic pollutants contained in the sludge [1, 2]. Pharmaceutical sludge contains relatively high levels of soluble organics, heavy metals, and recalcitrant antibiotics [3, 4], such as benzylpenicillin [5], aureomycin [6], and berberine hydrochloride [7]. Biological methods are more effective and less costly [8]. They are ineffective for removing all potentially hazardous constituents. Physicochemical treatment methods are always complicated [9], while incineration is the most efficient method. Pharmaceutical sludge incurs high treatment and disposal costs [10]. An economical and green process for the treatment of pharmaceutical sludge is strongly desired
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