Abstract

2, 3, 4, 4'-tetrahydroxybenzophenone, THBP, is a substrate of photoresist used for manufacturing semiconductors. Wastewater from THBP manufacturing process contains THBP as a major pollutant, and starting materials and by-products as minors. These compounds are aromatic and biologically undegradable.
In the present work, a basic treatment process has been studied. The aromatic pollutants were degraded by activated chlorine, which was produced electrochemically at the surface of a ferrite anode in the wastewater added with seawater, and converted to biodegradable intermediates such as organic acids, and these intermediates were removed biologically with a submerged bed bioreactor. It was found that BOD was enhanced by one order of magnitude and that contribution to reduction of TOC was low in electrochemical step and very high in biological one. Pollution indexes, TOC, COD and BOD, were reduced by a rate of 80, 85 and 99%, respectively, through total treatment process.