Abstract
Sugar industry wastewater has the complex characteristic. Wastewater from the sugar industry, if discharged without treatment, poses pollution problems in both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. An attempted has been made to treat the sugar industry wastewater in an economical way with a combination of thermal and chemical treatment by aluminium salt. Results showed thermal treatment of sugar industry wastewater were 72% COD and 74% color removal at optimum pH 4.5, working temperature 85 °C, catalyst mass loading 5 kg/m3 and treatment time 9 hrs. The treated wastewater again treated with commercial alum shows 98% COD and 99.9% color removal at pH 6.5 and mass loading 6 mM. The filterability results show combined treated wastewater having 3.64 kg/m3 cake resistance and 5.26 × 10−12 medium resistance. Nearly 80% of supernatant settling was achieved at 40 min of settling time. Overall combined treatment was found to be more suitable to treat sugar industry wastewater up to the dischargeable limit.
