Conventional wastewater treatment processes are challenged by the need to effectively reduce pollutant loads before disposal or reuse, as the composition and concentration of contaminants in brewery wastewater change with time. This results in the variation of the oxidation-reduction potential (ORP) of the affluent. Hence, the current study is aimed at the application of ORP as a real-time tool to monitor brewery wastewater quality. Other physicochemical parameters of the local brewery in South Africa investigated included temperature (T), pH, conductivity, turbidity, total chemical oxygen demand (TCOD), soluble chemical oxygen demand (SCOD), particulate chemical oxygen demand (PCOD), total solids, orthophosphate, ammoniacal nitrogen, total Kjeldahl nitrogen (TKN), total nitrogen (TN), nitrate, and nitrite nitrogen. It was found that the ORP decreased (135 to −305 mV) with an increase in alkalinity (pH 4.4 to 12.2) with linear regression coefficient fit (R2 = 0.9994). The ORP facilitated the wastewater nutrient constituent degradability which improved the water quality. Furthermore, the high organic content of the brewery wastewater was found as measured by total COD (3447–11,813 mg/L). This suggests remediation before reuse of the brewery wastewater will require a robust integrated wastewater treatment process.
The discharge of industrial effluent constituting high orthophosphates and organic pollutants in water receiving bodies compromises freshwater quality and perpetuates eutrophication. In this study, an anaerobic–aerobic sequencing batch reactor (SBR) under activated sludge was investigated for orthophosphates and chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal from brewery wastewater. Raw brewery wastewater samples were collected on a daily basis for a period of 4 weeks. The findings of the study are reported based on overall removal efficiencies recording 69% for orthophosphates and 54% for total COD for a sludge retention time (SRT) of 7 days and hydraulic retention time of 18 h at mesophilic temperature conditions of ±25 °C. Moreover, the SBR system showed stability on orthophosphate removal at a SRT ranging from 3 to 7 days with a variation in organic volumetric loading rate ranging from 1.14 to 4.83 kg COD/m3.day. The anaerobic reaction period was experimentally found to be 4 h with the aerobic phase lasting for 14 h. The SBR system demonstrated feasibility on orthophosphates and COD removal with variation in organic loading rate.
The occurrence and fate of polyfluorinated compounds (PFCs) in the aquatic environment resulting from anthropogenic activities has become an emerging issue of environmental chemistry. PFCs have been detected in drinking water samples, aquatic life, human tissue, and blood serum. This is attributed to their xenobiotic attributes making them environmentally persistent, bio-accumulative, and globally distributed in water receiving bodies, posing serious health problems to aquatic life and human health. This is ascribed to PFCs’ peculiar physicochemical properties of being hydrophobic and oleophobic and their removal process from wastewater streams is different from any other organic pollutants. Therefore, this review summarizes the environmental occurrence and recent developments on microbial degradation of the most detected PFCs, i.e., perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) in water bodies. The available literature suggests that PFOA and PFOS are susceptible to biodegradation by Acidimicrobium sp. strain A6, Pseudomonas parafulva strain YAB1, Pseudomonas plecoglossicidia 2.4-D, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain HJ4. Moreover, the current study presents a summary on phytoremediation of PFOA and PFOS as a sustainable green technology. Despite the extensive work undertaken on bioremediation of PFOA and PFOS by biological processes, the available literature suggests that a lot of work still needs to be carried out aimed at investigating the biodegradation pathway of PFOA and PFOS by both microbial species and plants.
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