Acoustic and hydrodynamic cavitation-based combined treatment techniques for the treatment of industrial real effluent containing mainly pharmaceutical compounds

Acoustic cavitation for the process intensification of biological oxidation of CETP effluent containing mainly pharmaceutical compounds: Understanding into effect of parameters and toxicity analysis

“…The industrial effluent for the study, predominantly containing pharmaceutical sector based pollutants was collected from a Common Effluent Treatment Plant (CETP), Mumbai, India [23] . The physicochemical properties of the effluent are represented in Table 1 .…”

“…For the pretreatment of the CETP effluent, a dual stepped ultrasonic (AC) horn procured from M/s Dakshin, India was utilized for all experiments The geometrical details of the US horn have been well described in the previous work along with schematic representation [23] . US horn operates at a preset frequency of 22 kHz and a rated power dissipation of 250 W. All the experiments were conducted at a fixed volume of 200 mL of the effluent taken in a 250 mL glass beaker with 1:1 dilution of the effluent with DI water, since the availability of the industrial effluent was limited.…”

“…The optimized conditions of both stand-alone AC based approach and other hybrid AC + AOP based approaches were based on the previous study on treatment of the same CETP effluent [23] . The various pretreatment approaches such as AC, AC + H 2 O 2 , AC + KPS, AC + Fenton and AC + O 3 were performed for 1 h duration at ambient conditions [23] .…”

“…The optimized conditions of both stand-alone AC based approach and other hybrid AC + AOP based approaches were based on the previous study on treatment of the same CETP effluent [23] . The various pretreatment approaches such as AC, AC + H 2 O 2 , AC + KPS, AC + Fenton and AC + O 3 were performed for 1 h duration at ambient conditions [23] . Except Fenton based approach, every other pretreatment was carried out at neutral pH and the treated effluent was subsequently utilized for the BO without further modifications.…”

“…It can be seen from the literature that the application of acoustic cavitation in combination with chemical additives as a pretreatment process for the biological oxidation of industrial effluents dealing with CETP or pharmaceutical industry are not investigated. The use of cavitation-based pretreatment as a process intensification method for conventional biological oxidation of pharmaceutical effluent degradation can offer several advantages [15] , [22] , [23] in terms of enhanced degradation efficiency of pollutants, reduced sludge accumulation, cost savings and environmental benefits, while intensifying the overall treatment process. In this work we hypothesize that, the combination of acoustic cavitation with AOPs followed by the subsequent biological oxidation could create a synergistic effect, improving pollutant removal rates and effluent quality.…”