Pilot-Scale Study On Anaerobic-Aerobic Process For Pharmaceutical Wastewater Treatment

With the rapid development of chemical industry, the pollution of waterbody dueto the discharge of chemical wastewater becomes more and more serious. Since itshard biodegrability, high concentration and toxity, pharmaceutical wastewater hasbeen one of the main sources of water pollution in chemical wastewater. So it isnecessary for us to search for an economical and effective method to solve thisproblem. Anaerobic-aerobic biological treatment process is an effective conventionalprocess, which has been applied widely. While anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR),moving-bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) and membrane biological reactor (MBR) arecomparably new developed reactors, which have also attracted great attention. In thispaper, combining these four technologies together was studied to treat pharmaceuticalwastewater and exert advantages of each method, expecting to obtain best treatmenteffects and optical economical benefit.The experiment procedure consisted of three parts: the first was single aerobicbiological treatment, the second was anaerobic-aerobic biological treatment process,and the third was chemical treatment process, all tested samples adopt thepharmaceutical wastewater.Experimental results showed that: turbidity, COD and NH₃-N removalefficiencies with the single aerobic treatment under the condition of co-metabolismwith co-exist of biodegradable organic C₆H₁₂O₆ were respectively 98%, 95% and 98%,when initial COD_Cr was 10000mg/L and initial NH₃-N was 500 mg/L, hydraulicretention time is 12¹8d. When the anaerobic(ABR)-aerobic(M-CMCBR) biologicaltreatment process was adopt, the removal efficiencies were not significantly improved,but the treatment ability was doubled. The results of the chemical treatments werehowever unappreciable. The maximum COD removal efficiency was only about 50%and was hard to improve. So compared with the chemical treatment, theanaerobic-aerobic biological treatment process is a more effective and feasible way tobe applied in the practice of pharmaceutical wastewater treatment.