DOF/DAF comparison for the treatment of milk industry wastewater

Abstract

The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of dissolved ozone flotation (DOF) in comparison to dissolved air flotation (DAF) for treatment of milk industry wastewater (MW). In the first phase of the experiment, a synthetic milk wastewater (SMW) was used to evaluate DOF and DAF, with and without addition of hydrogen peroxide, at pH 4.0 and pH 11.4. In the DOF tests, the concentration of ozone was equal to 19 (± 0.5) mg L-1 and in the tests with addition of hydrogen peroxide, the H2O2/O3 ratios tested were 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5. In the second phase, tests were performed using three MW from three different industries to validate the results obtained and to determine the DOF system's ability to treat this type of effluent. The parameters tested during validation were turbidity, total suspended solids, oils and greases (O&G), chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP). It was observed that the efficiency of the treatments was better at pH 4.0. The results showed a reduction of the efficiency with the use of DOF. The addition of H2O2 in DAF and DOF also resulted in reduced system efficiency. The results obtained with SMW only approximated those obtained with the MW from one of the industries that contained the largest traces of milk and cheese.

Keywords

• advanced oxidation process
• dairy wastewater
• dissolved ozone flotation