Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy

, Volume 16, Issue 2, pp 369–376 | Cite as

Evaluation of various pre-treatment processes on tannery sludge for enhancement of soluble chemical oxygen demand

  • K. Sri Bala Kameswari
  • Chitra Kalyanaraman
  • K. Thanasekaran
Original Paper
First Online:
Received:
Accepted:

Abstract

Overall sludge generation during the treatment of tannery wastewater is in the range of 18,200–165,200 tons per annum in India. One of the major problems faced by the tanning industry in India is the disposal of sludge. In recent years, increased attention has been given to minimization of waste sludge in wastewater treatment process. At present, each tannery is spending around Rs. 700–750 per ton for disposal of sludge into secured landfill facilities. Anaerobic digestion is one of the options for generation of biogas from primary and secondary sludge and to reduce sludge volume. In order to make anaerobic digestion more effective, pre-treatment of sludge before anaerobic digestion is the recent technological advancement employed to accelerate the rate of hydrolysis process. Various pre-treatment processes such as ozonation, sonication, hydrogen peroxide, alkaline, and alkaline thermal treatment were evaluated in the present study for increasing the soluble chemical oxygen demand separately in primary and secondary sludge generated during treatment of tannery wastewater. It was observed from the results obtained from the study that the increase in SCOD by various pre-treatments were in the order of ozonation > alkaline thermal treatment > sonication > alkaline treatment > hydrogen peroxide. The increase in the ratio of SCOD to TCOD by pre-treatments was effective for secondary sludge rather than primary sludge.

Keywords

Pre-treatment  Primary sludge  Secondary sludge  Soluble chemical oxygen demand 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), India to undertake the study under the ZERIS-XII Five Year Plan Network project. The authors would like also to thank the Director, Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI) India for permitting to publish this work.

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  • K. Sri Bala Kameswari
    • 1
  • Chitra Kalyanaraman
    • 1
  • K. Thanasekaran
    • 2
  1. 1.Environmental Technology Division, CSIR - Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI)ChennaiIndia
  2. 2.Centre for Environmental Studies, Anna UniversityChennaiIndia

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