Advanced treatment of antibiotic wastewater by granular activated carbon
颗粒活性炭深度处理抗生素废水

A kind of granular activated carbon (GAC), KC16, was selected by batch experiments from thirteen types of GAC with different materials or sizes for advanced treatment of antibiotic wastewater effluent from a combined process of anoxic and membrane bioreactor (MBR). The removal efficiencies of TOC, COD, UV254 and color in the batch experiments reached to as high as 86.99%, 88.43%, 89.69% and 94.08%, respectively, at 30 g/L of KC16 dosage and 6 h of adsorption in batch experiments. The adsorption of pollutants by KC16 met with the Langmuir isotherm and the adsorption process of KC16 fitted a pseudo second-order kinetics model (R2>0.99). The results of the dynamic adsorption experiments with KC16 showed that the effluent met with Discharge Standards of Water Pollutants for Pharmaceutical Industry Fermentation Products Category (GB21903-2008), and the amount of GAC was 2.45 kg for treating 1 ton of antibiotic wastewater under as the filtration rate at 1.0 m/h in the GAC column with the height of 1.2 m.