The protection of our environment from pollution by various industrial wastewater discharges is of great importance that each Industry treats its effluent to meet acceptable limit/design means to reclaim water from industrial effluents for re-use. The study aimed at reclaiming water from wastewater by assessing the performance of two cellulose adsorbents using the fixed-bed column method to treat pharmaceutical/metal wastewater. The study was carried out by determining the physico-chemical and microbiological parameters of wastewater quality before and after treatment using fixed-bed column. Effluent samples were collected and analyzed according to standard methods.
The range of percentage reduction in pollution load with respect to treatment time: 30, 120, 360 and 1440 min was 45-52%, 55-64%, 31-43, 25- 45%, 41- 44%, 55-73%, 48- 51%, 48-54%, 56-71% 13-31%, 45-52%, 47-67% from the metal effluent using nanocellulose adsorbent while 14-24%, 18-23%, 4-10%, 28-46%, 16-20%, 24-42%, 14-32%, 42-57%, 32-52%, 36-47%, 37-56%, 8-53% from the pharmaceutical effluent using oxidized cellulose adsorbent for colour, turbidity, conductivity, total hardness, Nitrite, Phosphate, Ammonia, Biochemical Oxygen Demand, Chemical Oxygen Demand, total solids, total suspended solids and total dissolved solids respectively. Up to 99.9 % was achieved by the adsorbents in the removal of biological contaminants. The study concluded that the celluloses adsorbents showed promising potentials as one-point adsorbent that can be used for water reclamation from wastewater by its ability to remediate both physico-chemical and bacteriological contaminants.