Study on various pretreatment processes in membrane bioreactor for tannery wastewater treatment to reduce biofouling

Abstract

Many industries have adopted the practice of discharging hazardous newlinecontaminants into fresh water. Because of a lack of fundamental understanding newlineabout the adverse consequences of these toxic chemicals, industries are newlinereleasing them without any pre-treatment. Toxic contaminants deteriorated the newlinequality of available water and triggered lethal damage to aquatic organisms and newlinehumans because of this long-term discharge activity. Among the numerous newlineindustries, tannery industry plays a vital role in generating huge amount of newlinewastewater each year. The discharged water from tannery industries contains newlinenumerous toxic pollutants and most of them are hazardous and carcinogenic in newlinenature. Hence, it is important to treat the industrial effluents properly before newlinedischarging them into the landfills or into the water stream. The stringent nature newlineof toxic compounds present in the water makes the task complex for newlineconventional treatment methods thereby failing to treat the industrial effluent newlinethat meets the industrial discharge standards. newlineMembrane bioreactor (MBR) considered as a greener technology, newlineemerged as the preferred alternative for conventional methods due to their newlineefficacy and high reliability. MBR mainly consists of activated sludge process newlinealong with microfiltration process resulting in low consumption of space for newlineoperation. MBR exhibits many advantages over conventional activated sludge newlineprocess such as high quality of treated water, efficacy to handle high organic newlineload and lesser sludge production. In spite of exhibiting, various advantages newlineMBR possess a major drawback of fouling which restricts its use widely. newlineTo address the issue of fouling in MBRs, we have studied four newlinedifferent pre-treatment processes to handle tannery wastewater: Peroxone, newlineFenton Oxidation, Electro-coagulation, and Electro-oxidation. The tannery newlinewastewater was collected from a common effluent treatment facility at newlinePallavaram, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, for the experimental research. newline