Seeding the drainage canal of a wastewater treatment system for the natural rubber industry with rubber for the enhanced removal of organic matter and nitrogen

Abstract

Current pretreatment methods for wastewater from natural rubber (NR) factories either have low rubber recovery efficiency or are costly to operate. A wastewater treatment system was developed that combines a pretreatment canal (PTC) seeded with rubber, an anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR), and a down-flow hanging sponge (DHS) reactor. The PTC is simple to implement and contributes to not only rubber recovery but also organic matter removal in the ABR and nitrogen removal in the DHS reactor. In experiments, the PTC recovered 16.6% of residual rubber through coagulation. The ABR increased the chemical oxygen demand removal efficiency and methane recovery compared with other anaerobic reactors treating raw NR wastewater. The DHS reactor removed 30.7% of total inorganic nitrogen (TIN) by nitrification, anaerobic ammonia oxidation and denitrification. Feeding the bottom stage of the DHS reactor with sodium acetate solution increased the TIN removal efficiency to 87.8%. The water quality of the final effluent achieved the Vietnamese standards for the NR industry. Microbial community analysis was performed to identify the dominant microorganisms and mechanisms in the PTC, ABR, and DHS reactor.

Keywords: Denitrification; Down-flow hanging sponge; Natural rubber wastewater treatment; Pretreatment canal; Rubber seeding.