Combination of chemical coagulation and membrane-based separation for dairy wastewater treatment

Airton C Bortoluzzi; Carolina E Demaman Oro; Maicon S N Dos Santos; Marcelo L Mignoni; Rogério M Dallago; Juliana Steffens; Marcus V Tres

doi:10.1007/s13197-022-05590-2

Combination of chemical coagulation and membrane-based separation for dairy wastewater treatment

J Food Sci Technol. 2023 Jan;60(1):84-91. doi: 10.1007/s13197-022-05590-2. Epub 2022 Sep 12.

Authors

Airton C Bortoluzzi^{1

2}, Carolina E Demaman Oro², Maicon S N Dos Santos³, Marcelo L Mignoni², Rogério M Dallago², Juliana Steffens², Marcus V Tres³

Affiliations

¹ Federal Institute of Education, Science, and Technology of Rio Grande do Sul (IFRS), Domingos Zanella St., 104, Erechim, RS 99713-028 Brazil.
² Department of Food Engineering, URI Erechim, 1621 Sete de Setembro Av., Fátima, Erechim, RS 99709-910 Brazil.
³ Laboratory of Agroindustrial Processes Engineering (LAPE), Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM), 1040 Sete de Setembro St., Center DC, Cachoeira do Sul, RS 96508-010 Brazil.

Abstract

An important factor resulted from the ascension of the milk and milk-based by-products production is many effluents directly released into the environment. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of the combination of the chemical coagulation, with ferric chloride as a coagulant, and the membrane separation processes (MSP) and reverse osmosis (RO) processes in the treatment of effluents from a powdered milk dairy industry. To evaluate the effectiveness of the integration of these mechanisms, the characterization of the effluents was carried out through Total Nitrogen (N_total), Total Organic Carbon (TOC), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), color, pH, and turbidity analysis. Regarding the treatments with ferric chloride, the N_total removal was up to 55.7% (concentration of 1.2 g L^{- 1}) and the color up to 50% (0.7 g L^{- 1}). For the MSP and RO treatments, the color removal was up to 100% (1st RO), turbidity up to 100% (1st RO), COD up to 98.7% (3rd RO), and TOC up to 96.7% (3rd RO). Finally, the integration of the chemical coagulation and MSP processes was efficient for the treatment of dairy industry wastewater and provides the return of water in appropriate characteristics according to legislation.

Keywords: Coagulation; Dairy; Ferric chloride; Microfiltration; Reverse osmosis; Wastewater.

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