Treatability Testing and Design to Meet Pharmaceutical Effluent Limit for Acetone

This project involved developing a wastewater solution to help a pharmaceutical client treat its wastewater and meet the permit limits for acetone in its discharge to the local Publically Owned Treatment Works (POTW). Although the client's manufacturing facility does not use acetone in its manufacturing processes, acetone spikes had been identified in their final effluent. The client believed the acetone spikes were attributed to the conversion of acetone from the use of isopropyl alcohol (IPA) in the manufacturing processes. Acetone excursions above their permit limit prompted the need to implement a control strategy. An alternatives evaluation was conducted to evaluate biological treatment alternatives on achieving the acetone target limit of 2.1 mg/L (70% of the permit limit of 3.0 mg/L, in effect at the time of the study). A Sequencing Batch Reactor solution was selected to remove acetone and isopropyl alcohol (IPA-suspected as the source of acetone). An IPA recovery and source reduction program was also implemented to reduce the IPA loading and size of the SBR system.Batch treatability tests were performed on the wastewater to refine and confirm process design parameters and performance estimates for the Sequencing Batch Reactor (SBR) plant design. Multiple tests were conducted to evaluate variability in wastewater characteristics and consistency in meeting the acetone permit limit. The tests were performed on actual wastewater samples collected from the site. These tests were done on representative samples to determine the variability in process parameters for evaluating biological treatment. These treatability tests were conducted at the HDR|HydroQual laboratory in Mahwah, New Jersey. This paper will present the treatability testing and how the results were used to design the SBR treatment system. Full scale performance data is presented to compare the actual acetone biodegradation rate in the full scale system versus what was used for the design from the treatability tests.