Pilot Plant Studies of Pharmaceutical
Wastes at the Upjohn Company
J. R. CUSHMAN and J. R. HAYES
Engineers
The Upjohn Company
Kalamazoo, Michigan
In 1945 when The Upjohn Company decided to provide production
facilities for antibiotics and to expand existing manufacturing facilities
by building at the Portage Road site, considerable thought was given
to the design of an adequate sewage treatment plant. The plant was
designed to treat all wastes from the antibiotic production building and
from the main manufacturing building using a biological filtration
process. This plant was successfully placed in operation in 1948. The
effluent was discharged into a small stream used for fishing and recreational purposes and the quality, therefore, had to be exceptionally good.1
In addition to the antibiotics and manufacturing buildings, separate
buildings were constructed to house the Fine Chemicals manufacturing
processes and the associated Pilot Laboratory facilities. The wastes from
these buildings were initially discharged to a 90-acre pond located on
company property, as an expedient and convenient means of disposal.
Originally, these wastes were of relatively low BOD and volume, but
as production increased and additional manufacturing processes were
added, the waste load increased and the pond became septic and malodorous. Odor complaints were received from neighbors and to complicate
the problem, plans were being made for additional manufacturing
facilities.
It was apparent that some form of abatement was necessary to
alleviate the waste situation. Therefore, two measures were taken concurrently to correct the problem. These were:
1. A preventive waste treatment program to combat pollution at the
source.
2. Construction of a waste treatment pilot plant to determine the
amenability of the chemical waste  to biological reduction.
This paper will present some of the results obtained from the pilot
plant studies. Both the biological filtration and the activated sludge
processes were investigated; however, only the biological filtration phase
is being reported upon.
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