Non-Biological Slaughterhouse Wastewater Treatment with Membrane Processes-An Opportunity for Water Recycling

Maximilian Philipp; Jascha Reich; Sven-Uwe Geißen

doi:10.3390/nano12132314

Non-Biological Slaughterhouse Wastewater Treatment with Membrane Processes-An Opportunity for Water Recycling

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2022 Jul 5;12(13):2314. doi: 10.3390/nano12132314.

Authors

Maximilian Philipp¹, Jascha Reich¹, Sven-Uwe Geißen¹

Affiliation

¹ Institut für Technischen Umweltschutz, Fachgebiet Umweltverfahrenstechnik, Technische Universität Berlin, Sekr. KF 2, Straße des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin, Germany.

Abstract

The pressure-driven membrane separation processes ultrafiltration (UF) and reverse osmosis (RO) enable the effective purification of wastewater, in particular in combination, allowing organic and inorganic contaminants to be separated from the wastewater. Consequently, this work investigates the suitability of this technology for slaughterhouse wastewater (SWW) recycling. This was investigated by means of laboratory and bench-scale plant membrane experiments, whereby slaughterhouse wastewater (SWW) pre-treated by flotation was first treated with UF and then further purified with RO. Through the process combination UF + RO in the bench scale experiment, a reduction of the parameters total organic carbon (TOC), chemical oxygen demand (COD) of more than 98% and 97% for the parameter total nitrogen (TN) could be achieved. This means that wastewater reuse without product contact can be guaranteed. For direct process water reuse, only the concentration limit for ammonium could not be reached. In addition, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) analyses of the RO membrane were carried out before and after the experiment, which did not indicate any scaling effects.

Keywords: membrane separation technology; non-biological treatment; recycling; reverse osmosis; slaughterhouse wastewater; ultrafiltration; wastewater treatment.

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the “Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung” (BMBF) and “The APC was funded by the Open-Access-Publikationsfonds of Universitätsbibliotheken TU Berlin und UdK Berlin”. The study was conducted as part of the SUSPIRE project funded by the “Federal Ministry of Education and Research“ (BMBF) as part of the TUNGER 2+2 program.