Anaerobic Treatment of Pharmaceutical Wastewater

• Main Author: Abd Rahim, Muhamad Farhan
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Teknologi Petronas 2008
• Subjects: TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/7490/1/2008-Anaerobic%20Treatment%20Of%20Pharmaceutical%20Wastewater.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/7490/

This final report is prepared to report the whole progress of the studies of anaerobic treatment of pharmaceutical wastewater. The project analysis done focused on monitoring the performance of upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor to treat the pharmaceutical wastewater. Two reactors with different operating temperatures, mesophilic (35±l°C) and thermophilic (54±1°C) were used. The sludge chosen for anaerobic reactors was taken from UTP Sewage Treatment Plant. The aim of this project is to determine the optimum operating condition of the reactors and also to monitor the performance of reactors in removing the COD with application of different Organic Loading Rates (OLR) and Hydraulic retention times (HRT). The pharmaceutical wastewater was divided into two strength based on COD concentrations which, low strength (300-500 mg!L) and high strength (1700-2000 mg!L ). Based on wastewater strength and the hydraulic retention time, the period of the works is divided by five phase with different OLR ranges. The OLR was increase from 0.07 to 0.56 kg COD/m3d. The hydraulic retention times (HRT) was ranged from 5 to 3 days. The reactor performance was monitored for 211 days. Phase 1 to 2 consist of low strength wastewater while Phase 3 to 5 consist of high strength of wastewater. The highest percentage of COD removal for mesophilic reactor was 95% while for thermophilic reactor, the percentage removal was 93%. The methane productions occur at range of 50-300 mL for both of the reactors. The Phosphorus for both effluents was 10-40 mg!L. The Annnonia Nitrogen for both effluents was 5-14 mg!L. During phase 4 the reactor failure incident occurs at mesophilic reactor causing its instability to remove COD. Anaerobic reactor has high percentage of COD removal efficiency and the methane produced can be beneficial to industry.