Performance comparison of phenol removal in pharmaceutical wastewater by activated sludge and extended aeration augmented with activated carbon

Abstract

This study investigated the removal of phenol, Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), and ammonia from pharmaceutical wastewater using activated sludge (AS) and extended aeration (EA) systems. Also, the impact of adding activated carbon media on the performance of the two systems has been studied. Synthetic sewage was used with a composition of COD equaling 1500 mg/L. The experimental work was divided into five scenarios for the two reactors based on the Phenol concentration, 0.0 mg/L in the first scenario, 50.0 mg/L in the second and third scenarios, but activated carbon has been added to the third one. The concentration of Phenol was 100.0 mg/L and 150.0 mg/L for the fourth and fifth scenarios, respectively. The experimental results indicated that EA system gives higher removal efficiency than that by AS system for COD, phenol, and ammonia. In addition adding activated carbon of just 1.0 gm/L of the working reactor volume in both systems (AS, EA) has improved the removal efficiency. GPS-X simulator was employed to predict the performances of the biological systems under high effluent concentration of COD reaching up to 19000 mg/L. The simulation results indicated that EA effluent could comply with Egyptian Cod (Law no 44/2000).