Anaerobic/aerobic treatment of a petrochemical wastewater from two aromatic transformation processes by fluidized bed reactors.

An integrated fluidized bed reactor (FBR) has been employed as the treatment for petrochemical industry wastewaters with high organic matter and aromatic compounds, under anaerobic and aerobic conditions. The system was operated at hydraulic residence time (HRT) of 2.7 and 2.2 h in the anaerobic and aerobic reactor, respectively. The degree of fluidization in the beds was 30%. This system showed a high performance on the removal of organic matter and aromatic compounds. At different organic loading rates (OLR), the chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal in the anaerobic reactor was close to 85% and removals of the COD up to 94% were obtained in the aerobic reactor. High removals of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes, styrene, 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene, 1,3,5-trimethylbenzene and naphthalene were achieved in this study.

Decolorization of the AO24 azo dye and reduction of toxicity and genotoxicity in trickling biofilters.

Acid Orange 24 (AO24) dye was degraded in a trickling biofilter packed with peat and wood chips and inoculated with biomass from a petrochemical industry wastewater system. Different operating strategies were tested; in the first stage, two biofilters were operated independently--one non-aerated biofilter (passive) and the other with aeration-subsequently, the systems were operated serially, and effluent from the non-aerated biofilter was fed to the biofilter with aeration. This treatment train was used to test three different filtration velocities--0.141, 0.282, and 0.423 m/d. The results show that, when operating the systems with a dye charge of 0.035 kg AO24 m2/d and treating the effluent in a single step, good removal efficiencies of AO24 (95 and 89%), COD (63 and 53%), and acute toxicity (63 and 78%) were obtained in both biofilters (with and without air), although mutagenic and potentially carcinogenic intermediary compounds were not removed, because genotoxicity exhibits values higher than 2.0 units for the mutation rate. When using the non-aerated biofilter/aerated biofilter treatment train, it is possible to treat a dye charge 3 times greater (0.106 kg AO24 m2/d) and efficiently remove 98% AO24, 76% COD, 100% acute toxicity, and 100% genotoxicity, which indicates that, with this biological system, an advanced degree of biotransformation and mineralization of the azo dye AO24 is achieved.