ORGANIC INDUSTRIAL WATER TREATMENT

Organic industrial wastewater

Organic industrial wastewater contains organic industrial waste streams from chemical industries and large-scale chemical works, mainly using organic substances for chemical reactions.

The output wastewater contains organic substances of different origin and characteristics. They can only be removed by special pretreatment of wastewater followed by biological treatment. Most organic industrial park wastewater is produced by the following industries and plants:

– Factories producing pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, organic dyes, glues and adhesives, soaps, synthetic detergents, pesticides and herbicides;

– Tannery and leather factories;

– Textile factories;

– Paper and cellulose factories;

– Factories of the oil refining industry;

– Breweries and fermentation plants;

- Metal processing industry.

For example, some special types of wastewater produced by the above mentioned industries are briefly introduced as follows.

Manufacturing wastewater from the pharmaceutical industry

The quality of pharmaceutical manufacturing wastes varies widely, due to the variety of basic raw materials, work processes and waste products. It is a characteristic of the pharmaceutical industry that many products and intermediates are manufactured in the same factory. Therefore, different types of wastewater with different qualities flow from different production areas.

For large chemical industries, it is also common to produce pharmaceutical products along with other chemical products. Sometimes waste includes extraction residues of natural and synthetic solvents, used nutrient solutions, specific hazardous substances, and many other organics.

Wastewater from pharmaceutical industry has very bad wastewater treatment quality. Usually a COD concentration in the range of 5000 – 15000 mg/L, a relatively low BOD 5 concentration and a BOD 5 / COD ratio lower than 30% mean that the wastewater has poor biodegradability. Such wastewater has a bad color and high (or low) pH value, and it requires a strong pre-treatment followed by biological treatment with a long reaction time.