Treatment of petrochemical wastewater by employing membrane bioreactors: a case study of effluents discharged to a sensitive water recipient

Abstract

This work was conducted at the largest petrochemical membrane bioreactor (MBR) plant in the world. The effectiveness of MBR technology to treat petrochemical effluents was studied. The treated effluent is discharged in a very sensitive water body and needs to satisfy strict limits. To optimize MBR operation a pilot-scale MBR was set-up that received the same petrochemical effluents as the full scale. In the pre-denitrification configurations, ammonification was not effective. Variable removal of heavy metals/metalloids was obtained by the MBR with As, B, Ba, Mo, Al, Ni, Se, Sb, V and Zn removal being less than 40%, Pb, Hg, Cu, Ag, Cr, Mn and Co removal of 40-70% and only Fe removal being higher than 70%. Sludge clogging was observed in the membrane module; the accumulation of COD, N, P, As, Zn, Mo, Ni, Cd, Sb, Fe, Se and Co in the clogged sludge was higher than that in the activated sludge. The adoption of MBR coupled with suitable physicochemical pre-treatment was able to safeguard the treated effluent quality. © 2014 © 2014 Balaban Desalination Publications. All rights reserved

Treatment of petroleum wastewater by conventional and new technologies A review

“…As shown in Table 3, Malamis et al, (2015) showed that membrane bioreactor (MBR) removed heavy metals from petrochemical wastewater in different removal percentages, which range from 40% to 70%, and only iron removal was the maximum removal in this process, being higher than 70%. Moslehyani et al, (2015) indicated that the best nanocomposite membrane was nanocomposite membrane with the multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) incorporated in Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) matrix for the filtration purposes because it removed all pollutants from refinery wastewater and it was the excellent anti-fouling property.…”

“…Membranes could be generally classified into biological membranes (Malamis et al, 2015;Razavi and Miri, 2015) and synthetic membranes. Membrane technologies such as electrodialysis and ultra-filtration are being applied increasingly.…”

Photocatalytic Degradation of Toluene (Component of Crude Oil) Contaminated Water Using Titanium Dioxide Based Catalyst: A Review

“…Membranes could be generally classified into biological membranes (Malamis et al, 2015;Razavi and Miri, 2015) and synthetic membranes. Membrane separation was found useful in treating organic matter and more acceptable and economic than other physical treatment techniques (Jyoti et al, 2013;Kulkarni and Goswami, 2014).…”