CHARACTERIZATION AND BIO-KINETIC STUDY-SUGAR MILL EFFLUENT

Abstract

Most of the sugar mills in India do not have the Wdequate effluent treatment facilities and as a result, large quantity of effluents are discharged into the drains and cause enormous amount of adverse. environmental impact. Characterization and bio-oxidation forms the basis of treatment for these effluents. The waste streams from different sections of a sugar factory were characterized according to the prescribed standard methods and found that the pollution load exerted by the combined mill effluent is significantly high and therefore, cannot be discharged into the water bodies without doing proper pretreatment. The BOD exertion with time were measured for different samples and observed that it follows the first order bio-oxidation kinetics. Different methods were also used for estimating the kinetic parameters (. the reaction rate constant and Lo the ultimate BOD). With the present trend of available computer facilities, it is recommended that the non- linear least square optimizer (Marquardt method) is the best method for representation of BOD exertion data for sugar mill effluents. The temperature effect on the effluent bio-oxidation was studied in the temperature range 10-40toC. A break was observed in the Arrhenius plot at about 20°C. The activation energy was 9.614 MJ/mole between 10-20°C and 25.50 MJ/mole between 20-40°C. The effect of pH on the BOD5, 20 C was also studied in the pH range of 6.0 to 8.5 and it was observed that the activity of micro organism is highest at near neutral ph.