Abstract
Treatment of pharmaceutical wastewaters is a challenging task owing to their complexity and pollution load, variability in strength of waste streams accompanied with shock loads. Since no single treatment system is a viable option, integration of existing systems with advanced physical/chemical processes has been gaining attention for treatment of pharmaceutical wastewater. In the present study, two biological treatment methods were evaluated for their efficiency as pre-treatment system for RO which are sequencing batch reactor and membrane bioreactor. Efficiency of biological treatments tested SBR and MBR was pre-sented in terms of percentage removal of physico-chemical parameters. Total dissolved solids removal by SBR was 31.82% while MBR showed 29.25% reduction. Chemical oxygen demand removal by SBR was 69.54% while MBR showed 30.35% removal. Efficiency of combined treatments SBR-RO and MBR-RO was presented in terms of removal of total dissolved solids, COD and ammonia. TDS removal was the highest in the combination of SBR-RO with 95.94% removal, while MBR-RO combination resulted in 87.29% removal. Chemical oxygen demand was achieved maximum with the combination of MBR-RO 92.33% while competitive results were achieved with the combination SBR-RO also with 88.62% removal. Removal of ammonia was maximum with the combination SBR-RO 87.5%, while competitive results were obtained with MBR-RO 85.51%. From the results, it can be understood that SBR was efficient in removing ammonia, total dissolved solids and was equally competent in removing chemical oxygen demand. This study concludes that combined treatment of SBR-RO proves to be promising in treating pharmaceutical wastewaters.
Highlights
Treatment of pharmaceutical wastewaters is a challenging task owing to their complexity and pollution load, variability in strength of waste streams with shock loads
Chemical oxygen demand was achieved maximum with the combination of membrane bioreactor (MBR)-reverse osmosis (RO) 92.33% while competitive results were achieved with the combination sequencing batch reactor (SBR)-RO with 88.62% removal
Removal of ammonia was maximum with the combination SBR-RO 87.5%, while competitive results were obtained with MBR-RO 85.51%
Summary
Treatment of pharmaceutical wastewaters is a challenging task owing to their complexity and pollution load, variability in strength of waste streams with shock loads. These factors govern the effectiveness of conventional treatment systems. Unique characteristics of SBR include its competence in removal both organic matter and nitrogen from wastewater [7] [8] [9]. Conditions of both aerobic and anaerobic can be adopted in SBR for removal of phosphorus [10] [11] [12]. These properties of SBR make it viable economically [13]
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