Treatment of pharmaceutical wastewater using thermophilic UASB reactor

Biological treatment of pharmaceutical wastewater was performed using upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor. Pre-treatments were not used in this study. Wastewater was taken from pharmaceutical factory that produced non-penicillin product. UASB reactor was evaluated under thermophilic (55±2°C) operating condition. Three hydraulic retention times (HRT) i.e. 5 days, 4 days, and 3 days were used for the UASB reactor. The UASB reactor was seeded with biomass from aerobic treatment. The chemical oxygen demand (COD) of wastewater was 458-2217 mg/L.
COD removal efficiencies were approximately 85%. The highest methane production was achieved by the UASB reactor at HRT of 3 days. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) performed on the results showed that, at 5% level of significance; the COD removal was significantly affected by HRT.