Simulation of Kinetic Model for Anaerobic Digestion of Pharmaceutical Wastewater

This work presents the treatment of the pharmaceutical wastewater using anaerobic digestion was carried out in this work. The results obtained showed that most of the wastewater parameters were reduced to acceptable levels after the digestion. The kinetic data was well described by the first-order kinetic equation. The following kinetic parameters: maximum rate of substrate utilization (K), half velocity or saturation constant (KS), endogenous decay coefficient (Kd), biomass or microbial growth yield (Y) and maximum specific microorganism growth rate (µmax) were determined as 0.0283 day-1, 26.911 mg/l, 0.0112 day-1, 116 mg/mg and 0.0316 day-1 respectively. This suggests that the anaerobic process would require inoculation. The model for the anaerobic digestion in a continuous flow reactor unit under homogeneous steady state was developed using the kinetic data obtained and the subsequent design table developed can be used in the actual plant design for the continuous process.