Abstract
Milk and dairy products’ production lines generate pollution in the form of food waste. The management of this waste concerns professionals that fit the purpose of this study to assess the chemical risk of the raw liquid effluents that are discharged from a milk processing plant located in Bechar (Southwest of Algeria) by analyzing the main chemical indicator parameters of water pollution following official analytical methods. A total of ten samples were analyzed during the months of February, March and April of the year 2019. The obtained results were interpreted according to the regulatory requirements recommended by the Algerian standard related to threshold limit of physicochemical parameters’ values. The obtained results showed pollution signs revealed by high levels of the organic matters, expressed by significant means related to the following parameters: chemical oxygen demand (COD: 810.33 mg/L), 5 days-biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5: 797.91 mg/L), total suspended solids (TSS: 47.3 mg/L) and turbidity (174.014 NTU) exceeding those required by the national standard, except other physicochemical parameters, such as pH, conductivity, sulfate, nitrate and nitrite contents that did not exceed the threshold of acceptable values. Although these raw effluents present a high organic load expressed by average BOD5/COD ratio equal to 0.985, they constitute organic matters in a dissolved form (average value of the TSS/BOD5 ratio = 0.076). Furthermore, The COD/BOD5 ratio that had an average value equal to 1.015 underlines the biodegradability character of discharged dairy effluents. The high pollution levels which are aggravated by the lack of wastewater treatment can hurt the environment and the biological diversity and, therefore the humans' health. This requires an immediate intervention for a solution, where it is very important that proper wastewater treatment systems should be installed for the environment protection and for the ecological balance. Otherwise, it may constitute a risk to the public health on medium- to long-term by affecting the quality of the underground reservoir known as the main source of supply for the inhabitants of arid and semi-arid areas.
Highlights
Water is a natural element of paramount importance, essential for any living form; a necessary wealth for all human activities, used for drinking, cooking, agriculture, transport and recreation, among other purposes, a determining factor of production in sustainable development: it was and still is at the center of strategic interests in the world’s economy (Tadesse et al 2018)
The physicochemical parameters analyzed in this study were as follows: temperature, hydrogen potential, electrical conductivity (EC), turbidity, total suspended solids (TSS), sulfate, nitrate, and nitrite contents, chemical oxygen demand (COD) and 5 days-biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5), which are recommended by national regulations, to identify the pollution sources with a global vision on the chemical quality of discharged wastewater
Presentation of the studied dairy industry. It is a small milk processing plant located in Nif ErrhaaOuakda (14 km North of Bechar city-Southwest of Algerian standard · Bechar (Algeria)), a private investment inaugurated in November 2016
Summary
Water is a natural element of paramount importance, essential for any living form; a necessary wealth for all human activities, used for drinking, cooking, agriculture, transport and recreation, among other purposes, a determining factor of production in sustainable development: it was and still is at the center of strategic interests in the world’s economy (Tadesse et al 2018). Algeria is considered as the biggest consumer of milk and dairy products at the Maghreb level (Benyagoub and Ayat 2014). The dairy industry produces washing water, a high strength waste, as a by-product of cleaning the facilities to maintain sanitary operations (Sukhadev Shivsharan et al 2013). They are considered to be the most polluting for the receiving environment because they don’t only reject huge volumes of wastewater with a variable pH and reject a large part that rich in organic matter and microorganisms to the receiving environment. If the dairy industry discharges are not toxic, they are quantitatively significant, i.e., 0.3–11 L of dairy effluents per liter of processed milk (Hamy 2005)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
