A Case Study of Industrial MBR Process for Poultry Slaughterhouse Wastewater Treatment

Authors

1 Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

2 Spektra WaterTech Sdn Bhd, 21, Jalan Serendah 26/39, Kawasan Perindustrian HICOM, Seksyen 26, 40400 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia

Abstract

The wastewater discharged from the poultry slaughterhouse always contains high levels of chemical oxygen demand  (COD) and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and thus, it requires proper treatment to minimize its negative impacts on the receiving water bodies. In this work, we presented a local case study of the full-scale implementation of membrane 
bioreactor (MBR) process with capacity of 144 m3/day to treat the poultry slaughterhouse wastewater. Over the 6-month  monitoring period, our results showed that the permeate flow rate of the MBR process was relatively stable and only  suffered from approximately 16% flux decline for the entire period with 8-h operation daily. Such flux deterioration is acceptable given the membrane was not subjected to any cleaning process. With respect to the separation efficiencies,  the MBR process showed a very promising performance by meeting almost all of the parameters’ limit of the National  Water Quality Standards (Class IIB Limit), except for the dissolved oxygen (DO) that displayed slightly higher value than
the maximum limit. A chemical cleaning process using sodium hydrochloride as agent was found to be effective to  retrieve the permeate flow rate of the fouled membrane by 99%, indicating the deposited organic foulants were mainly  reversible ones. The findings from this case study clearly demonstrated the potential of MBR process for treatment of  poultry slaughterhouse wastewater and played an important role to minimize the negative impacts of discharged  effluents on the environment. 

Graphical Abstract

A Case Study of Industrial MBR Process for Poultry Slaughterhouse Wastewater Treatment

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Volume 8, Issue 1
Special Issue: Membranes for Development and Sustainable Future
January 2022
  • Receive Date: 19 January 2021
  • Revise Date: 23 March 2021
  • Accept Date: 15 April 2021