Author(s)

J Zagorc Koncan, T Tišler & A Žgajnar-Gotvajn

Abstract

Toxicity reduction of a chemical plant effluent -result of effective lab-scale wastewater treatment J. Zagorc Koncan1, T. Tisler2 & A. Zgajnar-Gotvajn1 1Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia 2National Institute of Chemistry, Slovenia Abstract Industrial wastewaters may have a significant impact on municipal activated sludge plants. In addition to control of conventional pollutants, which may affect effluent or sludge quality in the municipal plant, pre-treatment of industrial wastewaters prior to discharge to a sewerage system may be required for removal of inhibitory or biotic compounds which would interfere with the operation or performance of the plant or cause effluent toxicity. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the effect of lab-scale pretreatment of effluent from chemical industry. By comparative investigation of biodegradability and toxicity of raw and treated effluents, the beneficial impact of industrial effluent pretreatment was shown evidently. The final quality of effluent met standards for discharge into the sewerage system. Introduction The harmful effects of wastewaters on receiving streams, caused by insufficient quality of effluents, inadequate dimensioning and overloading of present treatment plants, as well as the trends of science and technology call for improvement of the treatment technologies, development of advanced treatment processes and above all for waste minimization in industrial processes to meet the increasing water quality standards. The organic chemicals and synthetic fibres industry is of importance in terms of its impact to the environment. Wastewaters are generally strong and may

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