Upgrade of a petrochemical wastewater treatment plant by an upflow anaerobic pond

A petrochemical plant producing terephthalic acid faced a saturation of its wastewater treatment facilities due to an increase in production. In fact, the plant has been growing in recent years, and the effluents have been treated by reproducing the original activated sludge design. However, owing to lack of space, as well as energy consumption and sludge production reaching a certain level, the plant considered other options for coping with the new effluent flow and organic load. Based on the authors' previous experience with this wastewater, the consultant designed a process consisting of modifying an existing pond, in order to add an anaerobic step before the aerobic tanks already in operation. The anaerobic pond is a three-stage process, all included in the same adapted basin, with a distribution system in the bottom of each stage that creates an upflow pattern. Terephthalic acid wastewater is a mixture of several organic acids, with different anaerobic degradation kinetics, acetic and benzoic acids being more rapidly removed; the staged design takes this into account. The first two stages have a plastic floating cover (5,813 m(3) and 8,719 m(3) volume, respectively), while the third one is a conventional UASB type reactor (6,276 m(3) volume) with a gas-liquid-solid separation device on top. The design wastewater flow is 230 m(3)/h, with 10,300 mg/l COD, a pH of 4.5 and a temperature of 40 degreesC. There is an effluent recycling pump (510 m(3)/h) to control upflow velocities and eventual acidification problems in the first two stages. The reactor, seeded with anaerobically adapted waste sludge from the aerobic plant, is now under start up, with the expected performance.