Advanced weakwastewater treatment by carbon active and activated sludge mixture

Although wastewaters effluent from the country’s waste water treatment plants has a low amount of contaminants (weak wastewaters); but in the most optimistic way, they can be used only for agricultural purposes. The reuse of this wastewater for industrial purposes requires the removal of ions and metals in the wastewater by the reverse osmosis (RO) process. In order to prevent obstruction of pores on RO membrane, the amount of organic pollutants in wastewater should be minimized.In this work, advanced urban wastewater treatment has been performed using activated sludge and carbon active mixtures. Experimental design was carried out based on two variables: volumetric percentage of activated sludge and carbon active weight using theresponse surface methodology (RSM). By performing experiments, the contribution and influence of amount of activated sludge and carbon active on the removal of pollutants in the wastewater sample (COD=100 mg/l, BOD=60 mg/l) was evaluated. Experimental results showed a decrease of over 90% of COD and BOD quantities. The highest amount of COD and BOD removal was obtained at 0.05:7 (grams of carbon active: volumetric percentage of activated sludge) after 8h of aeration which was 9 and 5 mg/l respectively.