A review of anaerobic treatment of saline wastewater

Abstract

Large volumes of saline (> 2% w/v NaCl) wastewaters are discharged from many industries; e.g. seafood processing, textile dyeing, oil and gas production, tanneries and drinking water treatment processes. Although anaerobic treatment would be the most cost-effective and sustainable technology for the treatment of many of these saline wastewaters, the salinity is considered to be inhibitory to anaerobic biological treatment processes. The recent applications of salt-tolerant cultures for the treatment of wastewaters from seafood processing and ion-exchange processes suggest that biological systems can be used to treat salty wastewaters. Additionally, organisms capable of anaerobic degradation of contaminants in saline solutions have been observed in marine sediments and have been characterized during the last two decades. This manuscript provides a review of the recent research on anaerobic treatment of saline wastewater and bacterial consortia capable of the anaerobic degradation of pollutants in saline solutions, documenting that the biological treatment of saline wastewaters is promising.

Salt rejection and water flux through a tubular pervaporative polymer membrane designed for irrigation applications

“…In the western United States co-produced water is characterized by extremely high total dissolved solids content (1000 to 400,000 mg·L −1 ), with sodium chloride (NaCl) being the dominant salt, and total oil content from 40 to 2000 mg·L −1 [8] One common type of such water is coal bed methane (CBM) co-produced water. Disposal or treatment techniques for produced water include anaerobic digestion [9], deep well injection, evaporation ponds and direct discharge into surface waters. Meanwhile, reuse of produced water generally necessitates desalination or demineralization, such as by distillation or reverse osmosis membrane treatment.…”

Antimicrobial peptides and proteins in the face of extremes: Lessons from archaeocins

“…For example, halophilic archaea have been suggested for use in the biological treatment of saline wastewaters, discharged from many industries like seafood processing, textile dyeing, oil and gas production, tanneries and drinking water treatment processes [77]. Biological treatment relies on the capacity of methanogens and members of the Halobacteriales to degrade organic compounds [77].…”

“…For example, halophilic archaea have been suggested for use in the biological treatment of saline wastewaters, discharged from many industries like seafood processing, textile dyeing, oil and gas production, tanneries and drinking water treatment processes [77]. Biological treatment relies on the capacity of methanogens and members of the Halobacteriales to degrade organic compounds [77]. Although investigation of archaeocin activity against methanogenic strains has not been reported yet, this aspect might prove interesting, as several gut methanogens have been suggested to be associated with human diseases [78].…”

Fate and effect of xenobiotics on biodegradation processes: basis for respirometric appraisal

“…In other words, it evaluates the biodegradation characteristics resulting from mixing pharmaceutical effluent with plain-settled tannery wastewater [9]. The characteristics of the tannery effluent are well ascertained in terms of water used and minimization, alternative treatment techniques and biodegradation characteristics [16][17][18][19] However, impact of wastewater additions of a different nature on resulting treatability constitutes a practically significant problem not investigated in similar studies.…”