Removal of toxic heavy metal ions from industrial effluent by MEUF and membrane bioreactors
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Industrial wastewaters from synfuels production, metal plating, petroleum refining, chemicals and food processing plants vary in composition and may contain toxic substances like heavy metal cations and chemical compounds in their aqueous phase and oily fractions. Regulations typically require on-site treatment to reduce biological and chemical oxidative demands and to remove toxic substances before releasing processing and surface run-off waters to municipal treatment plants or directly into rivers. Traditional methods of separating soluble compounds from a wastestream often involve a phase change, as in distillation, or extraction followed by distillation. These procedures are energy intensive; therefore, alternative low-energy separation processes are desirable. The proposed research will develop a process to completely remove the heavy metal ions from metal finishing industry's effluents. The principle of the proposed research is to combine Micellar Enhanced Ultrafiltration (MEUF) and algae containing Membrane Bioreactors (MB). MEUF, with lecithin as a surfactant, has already been shown to remove heavy metals from aqueous (50 to 90%) and non-aqueous wastes (90 to 97%). The efficiency of removal of trace levels of heavy metals will be increased by the continuous binding and separation of the ions through membrane bioreactors that are 20 to 50 times more efficient than conventional bioreactors. To develop this two-stage system, the binding of phospholipids responsible for micelle formation, two chelating agents, and that of three types of algae will be investigated. These studies will utilize the diafiltration apparatus used in the previous year's work. Further, the operating parameters of the two processes, individually and in combination, will be optimized.
