PREDICTING TREATABILITY OF MULTIPLE ORGANIC
PRIORITY POLLUTANT WASTEWATERS FROM
SINGLE-POLLUTANT TREATABILITY STUDIES
Don F. Kincannon, Professor
Anne Weinert, Graduate Student
Robin Padorr, Graduate Student
Enos L. Stover, Associate Professor
School of Civil Engineering
Oklahoma State University
Stillwater, Oklahoma 74074
The removal of organic priority pollutants from industrial wastewaters is receiving considerable attention. It appears that in the future the removal of organic priority pollutants
will be an important consideration in designing industrial wastewater treatment facilities.
The 114 organic priority pollutants offer the opportunity for numerous combinations and
treatment results. If treatability studies are required for each combination, considerable time
and money must be expended. However, if treatability studies from single-pollutant wastewaters could be used to predict the treatability fo a wastewater containing several priority
pollutants, then time and money could be saved in developing design data or making management decisions.
Until very recently, organic pollutants were assessed by parameters such as BOD, COD
and TOC. It has been only in the last few years that the removal of specific organic pollutants has been of concern. Likewise, predictive models have been based on removing BOD,
COD and TOC. Several investigators [1-5] have become concerned with the removal of
priority pollutants during biological treatment of industrial and municipal wastewaters.
Strier [1] and Strier and Gallup [2] made an excellent start in developing structure-activity
correlations for removal of priority pollutants. The Bioenvironmental Engineering Program
at Oklahoma State University has been engaged for the past three years in investigations
dealing with the biological treatment of wastewaters containing priority pollutants [6-10].
This chapter will look at the feasibility of predicting biological treatment of combined
priority pollutants by using treatability of wastewaters containing a single priority pollutant.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Complete-mix, bench-scale, continuous-flow activated-sludge reactors were used to treat
a synthetic wastewater containing a "base mix" plus the priority pollutant(s) under study.
The "base mix" included:
• ethylene glycol,
• ethyl alcohol,
• glucose,
• glutamic acid,
• acetic acid,
• phenol,
• ammonium sulfate,
• phosphoric acid, and
• salts.
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