Aerobic degradation of petroleum refinery wastewater in sequential batch reactor.

The aim of the present work was to study the effect of various parameters affecting the treatment of raw petroleum refinery wastewater (PRW) having chemical oxygen demand (COD) of 350 mg L(-1) and total organic carbon (TOC) of 70 mg L(-1) in sequential batch reactor (SBR). Effect of hydraulic retention time (HRT) was studied in instantaneous fill condition. Maximum COD and TOC removal efficiencies were found to be 80% and 84%, respectively, for fill phase of 2 h and react phase of 2 h with fraction of SBR being filled with raw PRW in each cycle being 0.4. Effect of parameters was studied in terms of settling characteristic of treated slurry. Kinetics of treatment process has been studied. FTIR and UV-visible analysis of PRW before and after treatment have been performed so as to understand the degradation mechanism.