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MBR Membrane Application - Chemical Wastewater Treatment

MBR Membrane Application – Chemical Wastewater Treatment

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Last Updated on July 25, 2022 by Kevin Chen

Due to the complexity of the pharmaceutical processes and the variety of raw materials, antibiotic wastewater, synthetic drug wastewater, traditional Chinese medicine wastewater, and various cleaning wastewater will be produced during their production.

The wastewater has the following characteristics: the concentration of residual reactants, products, solvents, suspended solids, salts, and catalysts in the water is high, and the COD concentration may reach hundreds of thousands of mg/l, and the pH has high volatility. In addition, most antibiotics in pharmaceutical chemical wastewater are designed to be highly structurally stable and lipophilic, which will cause acute severe toxicity to life. These are the reasons why it is difficult to purify chemical and pharmaceutical wastewater.

The below 2 cases provide an overview of the MBR membrane application for the chemical wastewater treatment process, including how it works and its benefits.

Case 1: Chemical Wastewater Treatment

Zhejiang Zhebang Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. is mainly engaged in the production and sales of cephalosporin APIs and pharmaceutical intermediates. Currently, the company produces 700 tons of production wastewater daily, including high ammonia nitrogen, high salt wastewater, high COD wastewater, antibiotic wastewater, and other pharmaceutical wastewater.

The project initially adopted the traditional process, but later it was transformed into the MBR process because it could not meet the productivity and effluent quality. Hollow fiber membrane was first used with frequent pollution, blockage, high maintenance difficulty, etc. Finally, our company confirmed the membrane flux through experiments and replaced it with all of our company’s MBR flat membranes in 2018, which solved the problem of frequent pollution and blockage.

MBR Membrane Application - Chemical Wastewater Treatment

MBR Project Overview

LocationShaoxing City, Zhejiang Province, China
Type of WastewaterPharmaceutical Chemical wastewater
Flow700 m³/d
CommissionedSince 2018( SPERTA MBR Membrane)

MBR Process Flow Chart

Case 1 Chemical Wastewater Treatment

Influent Condition and Effluent Quality

IndexInfluent ConditionDesigned EffluentActual Effluent
CODCr(mg/L)8000-10000≤500300-400
NH3-N(mg/L)200-300≤3515-20
pH6~96-97-8

Case 2: Chemical Wastewater Treatment

Headquartered in Jinan, Shandong Province, Qilu Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. is a large comprehensive modern pharmaceutical enterprise in China.

The wastewater sources mainly from chemical synthesis production with the main components of pollutants including dichloromethane, chloroform, toluene, triethylamine, acetonitrile, isopropanol, DMF, etc. The original process adopted the traditional process, which was later transformed into the MBR process, saving an area of about 650m2.

MBR Project Overview

LocationJinan City, Shandong Province, China
Type of WastewaterPharmaceutical Chemical Wastewater
Flow1,000 m³/d
CommissionedSince 2016, replaced in Oct. 2021 ( SPERTA MBR Membrane )

MBR Process Flow Chart

Case 2 Chemical Wastewater Treatment

Influent Condition and Effluent Quality

IndexInfluent ConditionDesigned EffluentActual Effluent
CODCr(mg/L)750-3500≤10050-80
NH3-N(mg/L)25-47≤200.5-7.2
TN(mg/L)40-100≤306-22
TP(mg/L)1.4-2.8≤10.4-0.9
Kevin Chen

Kevin Chen

Hi, I'm the author of this post and have been in this field for over 5 years. If you have questions regarding the MBR membrane products or want to purchase the MBR membrane, please feel free to contact me by email. kevin@spertasystems.com

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