Degradation of Halogenated Hydrocarbons by the Combined Application of Membrane Filtration with a Bioreactor

Abstract

The selective biological elimination of hazardous substances from wastewater is of vital importance for production‐integrated pollution control. It provides an opportunity to degrade otherwise persistent substances from wastewater mixtures. State‐of‐the‐art industrial wastewater treatment plants cannot perform this task although the potential for an enzymatic degradation of most of these substances exists. This is due to the hydrodynamically determined mixing characteristics of the treatment plants. The aim of developing new technologies should be the adjustment of substrate‐specific residence times at immobilized biomass.