Abstract

Biologically treated spentwash from distilleryusually contains high chemical oxygen demand (COD),biological oxygen demand (BOD), color, total dissolved solids(TDS) and other contaminants. In India, reverse osmosis (RO)treatment plants have been installed in many of the distilleries attertiary treatment, but are not properly working due to foulingproblem. To make the membrane process proven and reliabletechnology, proper pre-treatment is mandatory which not onlyimprove quality of RO permeate but also increase life of RO. Inthe present study, use of micro-filtration (MF) for pre-treatmentof RO has been evaluated at the tertiary treatment stage.Experiments were optimized in terms of different operatingparameters viz. initial pH (pHo: 2–10), trans-membranepressure (1-5 bars) and temperature (15- 43°C). Experimentaldata revealed that the MF could be an effective pre-treatment inremoving the pollutants (COD, color and TOC) and improvingperformance and water recovery (permeate flux) in comparisonto RO alone. Removal efficiency for COD, color, TDS and TOCwas observed as 31.5%, 42.7% and 27.6% with MF,respectively at optimized conditions with increased permeateflux from 17.5 LPH (RO) to 32 LPH (MF-RO).