British Petroleum/Shanghai SECCO Acrylonitrile Plant Wastewater Reuse Project

Currently, common technologies to produce acrylonitrile involve the propylene ammonia oxidation method.. An important characteristic of the acrylonitrile wastewater is its high concentrations of COD, organics, total nitrogen (TN) and toxic cyanide, and thus classified as hard to treat industrial wastewater. The concentration of acrylonitrile in wastewater produced from Shanghai British Petroleum’s (BP) new manufacturing facility is considered to be one of the highest in the world. Most conventional wastewater treatment technologies do not effectively remove TN and will require multiple treatment processes to meet the discharge requirements.On top of the difficulty for treating acrylonitrile wastewater, there is a growing concern of water shortage in the region because of the massive industrial water demand and the cost associated with it. Therefore, SECCO’s new acrylonitrile manufacturing plant in Shanghai tries to achieve 100% reuse of its wastewater as a supplementary source to the production plant. This manuscript presents the outcomes of pilot testing for feasibility study and full-scale performance using an innovated technology named biological double-efficiency process (BDP®) to treat this acrylonitrile produced wastewater.BDP combines state of the art aeration, airlift circulation, dilution, integrated all-in-one bioreactor technology, based on Simultaneous Nitrification/denitrification principles, resulting in excellent pollutant 94%, 93%, and 95%, and 94% removal rates for COD, TN, ammonia and cyanide respectively.