Advanced treatment of pharmaceutical and Tyre wastewater with the help of low-pressure reverse osmosis membrane

Abstract

In recent years, accelerated growth of industries is hand to hand with the economic growth of developing countries. Industrial development positively impacts the living standards and economic sector, but also greater strains on available resources and severe threat to environment. Among all the industrial wastes, liquid discharge is the most dreadful concern at present. Increasingly stringent government water quality policies enhanced the necessity of proper effluent treatment technology with cost effectiveness and consistent operations. There are many methods for wastewater treatment but from last few decades, substantial use of reverse osmosis (RO) membrane for water recovery from effluent streams has strengthen the demand of different approaches for the desired efficiency of salt removal and elevated water recycle ratio. In this paper to overcome environmental problems, an effort has been made for advanced treatment of pharmaceutical and tyre industrial wastewater. The paper shows that membrane M1 when exposed to 1000 mg/l of Sodium Chloride shows the rejection of 97.46% with water flux of 33.73 (l/m²hr).  Additionally, membrane M2 when exposed to 1000 mg/l of Sodium Chloride shows the rejection of 96.85% with water flux of 38.92 (l/m²hr).  The results obtained highlights that the separation in RO resulted in appreciable removal of TDS from M1 are 88.31 % while from M2 is 89.23 % in case of pharmaceutical wastewater. Moreover, the performance of TDS separation in M1 is 86.69 % whilst from M2 is 87.27 % is main subject of interest in case of tyre wastewater. Based on the results obtained, it can be concluded that the RO has been effective in the reduction of COD, BOD with complete TSS removal.