Treatment of Low-Strength Rubber Industry Wastewater Using a Combined Adsorbents and Membrane Technologies

Abstract

The discharge of liquid waste from rubber industry poses a significant threat to human beings and environment; therefore, it ought to be addressed. Meanwhile, activated sludge technologies are usually used in Indonesia by this industry to handle liquid waste and tackle discharge issues. The combined adsorbents and hybrid membrane UF/RO were proposed in this study to decrease contaminants parameter of rubber industry wastewater (RIW). Furthermore, to achieve this goal three steps of treatments were applied in the current experiment. The first step is filtration using sand filter columns containing silica sand and activated carbon. In addition, the second stage is categorized by adsorption using three types of adsorbents, namely calcium carbide residue (CCR), coal fly ash (CFA) and bentonite. The third stage is separation process using adsorbents and UF/RO. This investigation was conducted using three types of adsorbents arranged in series configuration followed by UF/RO.Results showed that combined adsorbent (CCR-CFA-bentonite) followed by UF/RO membranes increases the acidity of RIW from 4.70 to 7.28 with removal efficiency of turbidity, chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD), total suspended solid (TSS), ammonia-nitrogen (AN), and total nitrogen (TN) at 99.0, 88.1, 92.5, 89.5, and 67.5%, respectively.The currently proposed method is advantageous because it does not require a long processing time or an intensive treatment area. This is applicable in rubber industries wastewater treatment process and is therefore an alternative method to active sludge technologies. In addition, final permeate RO are potentially used as clean water for rubber factory needs.

The eco-friendly treatment of rubber industry effluent by using adsorbent derived from Moringa oleifera bark and Pseudomonas sp, cultured from effluent

“…The massive amount of nitrogen and various organic and inorganic compounds pose a serious threat to nature (Rungruang & Babel 2008). The large volumes of effluents discharged to soil and water by rubber processing factories in Asia and Africa create a lot of environmental hazards (Nasir et al 2020).…”

“…Operating and maintaining cost often compel the factories to go for open-type wastewater treatment systems. Processes such as coagulation and ozonation, aerobic and anaerobic microbial treatment, etc., are in common (Massoudinejad et al 2015;Jiang et al 2018;Nasir et al 2020).…”

“…In current days, adsorption is one of the highlighted methods. A three step treatment procedure was tried by Nasir et al (2020), in which the first step was filtration of the effluent by using silica and activated carbon based sand filter columns. Adsorption using three different types of adsorbents was the second stage.…”