International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET)
e-ISSN: 2395 -0056
Volume: 04 Issue: 03 | Mar -2017
p-ISSN: 2395-0072
www.irjet.net
Industrial Waste Water Treatment Using an Attached Media Afeefa Basheer1, Basil John P2, Haripriya s3, Sreepriya M4, Prof Neena Sunny5 Under Graduate Students, 5 Professor 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Mar Athanasius College of Engineering, Kothamangalam, Kerala, India 1, 2, 3, 4
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Abstract - Majority of residential units and small-scale
commercial operators in India dispose wastewater either onsite or into the public drainage systems, without paying any attention to the public health and environmental impacts. Need for high investments and the requirement for large operational space are the reasons often quoted against the installation of a proper wastewater treatment unit. In this present study emphasis has been given to evaluate removal prospects of organics and the nutrients by natural fibrous media, coconut coir as an attached media. The effects of vital factors such as organic loading rate (OLR) and hydraulic retention time (HRT) affecting the performance of reactor in terms of OM removal were investigated. It was found that the COD removal efficiency increased primarily with increase in OLR. However, after it reached to a constant value at OLR of about 1.33 kg COD/m3d, COD removal efficiency started to decrease significantly. The maximum COD removal was obtained at 1.33 Kg COD /m3 d and it was about 89.9%. Key Words : Coir fibre, HRT, OLR,COD , FLR
1.INTRODUCTION
biomass. Coir is a hard and tough organic fibre extracted from the husk of coconut. It is rich in cellulose and lignin, besides having high specific area and wetting ability – factors which are essential for bacterial adhesion in attached growth processes. R. Vinod et.al. (2014) had studied two different fibrous packing materials in a packed bed reactor for sewage treatment. They took coffee husk blended with wooden chips and coconut coir in two reactors with packing densities 40 and 70 Kg/m3 as a media for microbial growth. In this study they observed that the best performance (highest percentage removal) was given by the reactor packed with coconut coir packing density 40 kg/m3 compared to other two reactors. K V S Kudaligama et.al. in their paper, “Coir: a versatile raw material to produce stationary media for biological wastewater treatment systems” explained that several researchers are trying to develop coir as a practical medium in wastewater treatment systems and had tried to pack coconut coir as loose filled fibre, fine fibre cuts and coir fibre arranged in bottle brush like configuration. They gave the reason behind this as better attachment of bacteria on porous & rough surfaces of coir.
2.MATERIALS AND METHODOLOGY The increase in population density along with rapid industrialization creates threats to the environment. Water pollution has become a serious problem in our country. Treatment of domestic and industrial waste before their disposal into surface water was not given much importance until the recent past. This resulted in converting most of our rivers into super sewers. The ultimate goal of waste water treatment is the protection of environment in a manner commensurate with public health and socio-economic concern.
2.1 Material Coir is a hard and tough organic fibre extracted from the husk of coconut. It is an inexpensive fiber that is abundant in tropical regions. It has a lignin content of 45.84%, which makes it as the strongest of all known natural fibers, such as jute, flax, linen, cotton etc. The feasibility of using coir fiber as the attached medium for treatment of wastewater has not been studied extensively yet. Attached process employing coir fiber media exhibit high organic and nutrient removal rates, compared to suspended growth process.
Nowadays biological wastewater treatment seems to be a most promising tool in treatment of industrial wastewater like waste water from essential oil industry. Essential oil industry is an oil producing industry which produce oil from nutmeg. Here the treatment is carried out using the concept of attached growth process with fibrous coir media used as a medium for growth of bacteria. Bacteria cling to the surface of media and utilizes the organic matter in wastewater in presence of diffused air (from diffusers) thus converting it to © 2017, IRJET
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