Treatment of Phenolic Industrial Wastewater Using Activated Sludge Process Preceded by Anoxic Selector

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Chemical Engineering and Pilot Plant Department, Engineering Research Division, National Research Centre, Dokki, Cairo, Egypt

2 Institute of Environmental Studies and Research, Ain Shams University, Egypt

Abstract

Activated sludge process (ASP) has been widely used for the treatment of high organic load industrial
wastewater. Toxic compounds (e.g phenol at high concentration) limit the application of ASP. In the
present work, ASP preceded by anoxic selector was investigated for the treatment of phenolic effluents
generated from a chemical and pharmaceutical industry. The parameters affect the process (phenol
concentration, food to microorganism ratio (F/M), retention time and pH) were studied using batch and
completely mixed activated sludge (CMAS) type reactor (with and without anoxic selector). The results
showed that the maximum removal efficiency obtained by using batch process was 99.9% at 800 mg/l
initial phenol concentration, F/M ratio of 0.579 (g COD/g MLVSS.d) and pH around 7. For CMAS only,
the maximum applied phenol concentration was 2000 mg/l to yield effluent phenol concentration of 35
mg/l. For anoxic selector-CMAS, the maximum applied phenol concentration was 5500 mg/l to yield
effluent phenol concentration of 0.01 mg/l. It was found that the performance of industrial wastewater
treatment was significantly enhanced using anoxic selector. It is concluded that the use of properly
designed anoxic selector prior to CMAS significantly improves the performance of the process and can
tolerate much higher phenol concentration than that tolerated by the conventional CMAS. The
application of the proposed system contributes to the establishment of technically viable solutions for
water bodies pollution by phenolic wastewater.

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