|
Abstract:
|
Many of the existing methods for the treatment of rubber latex centrifugation
eflluent are not only unsatisfactory in their efliciency to effect near perfect treatment in
bringing down the COD to optimum level, but also time consuming and need a large
landspace. As the rate of effluent generation is extremely high (20 litres for kilogram of
rubber) there is a need for development of efficient system,capable of rapid reduction of
COD and BOD.
Though the organic load of the rubber efiluent is very high, it does not contain
much processed chemicals and therefore it can be considered as a ‘biological eflluent’.
Further, the ratio of the Chemical Oxygen Demand to Biological Oxygen Demand
(COD/BOD) of this effluent remain almost as a constant value. According to
Montgomery (1967), estimation of BOD is not ideally suited for studies on process
design, treatability, control of treatment plants, setting standards for treated effluents and
assessing the effect of polluting discharges on the oxygen resources of receiving waters.
Hence in the present study COD was measured to determine the impact of treatment
system on the effluent.
In the present study, attempts were made to evaluate the efficiencies of certain
methods such as packed bed reactor using immobilized microbial cells, rotating biological
contactor (RBC) and activated sludge process, for rapid and efficient treatment of
natural rubber latex centrifugation effluent. In addition, studies were also carn'ed out to develop a suitable bioprocess for the coagulation of skim latex, as an alternative to the
presently used acid coagulation process towards reducing the pollution load, besides
recovering quality rubber |