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Published on: October 15, 2015
Study on anaerobic digestion treatment of hazardous colistin sulphate contained pharmaceutical sludge
Fubin Yin1, Dongling Wang1, Zifu Li1
1School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Beijing Key Laboratory of Resource-oriented Treatment of Industrial Pollutants, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, PR China.
Abstract:
Pharmaceutical sludge is considered as a hazardous substance with high treatment and disposal fees. Anaerobic digestion could not only transform the hazardous substance into activated sludge, but also generate valuable biogas. This research had two objectives. First: studying the feasibility of anaerobic digestion and determining the biochemical methane potential (BMP) of pharmaceutical sludge under different Inoculum to substrate TS ratios (ISRs) of 0, 0.65, 2.58 and 10.32 in mesophilic condition of 37±1°C. Secondly, investigating the removal efficiency of colistin sulphate during anaerobic digestion. The results showed that the use of anaerobic digestion to treat the pharmaceutical sludge is feasible and that it can completely eliminate the colistin sulphate. The highest biogas production from pharmaceutical sludge is 499.46 mL/g TS at an ISR of 10.32.
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