ABSTRACT
In recent years, the demand for higher quality effluents in the pollution control field have led to the need to quantify the removal capability of biological treatment processes. One tool that has recently seen resurgence in the environmental field is the use of respirometry for the design and operation of biological wastewater treatment plants. Respirometry or oxygen uptake measurements are key because they can be utilized to quantify the ability of a particular biomass system to degrade target wastes. Several papers have been recently published describing the use of respirometric techniques to determine the values of the biokinetic constants for biological systems treating toxic and nontoxic organic compounds. 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 Work has also been done utilizing these techniques on actual municipal 5 , 6 , 7 and industrial 8 waste systems. Other results showed that respirometric techniques can be used to predict plant effluent quality for a municipal activated sludge process. 5 For the current work, Hercules Incorporated desired to evaluate the biodegradability of five of its paper chemical products in anticipation of the startup of their HKC Korea Waste Plant which has to treat these production facility wastewaters. The goals of this work were twofold. The first objective was to estimate the effluent quality that will be produced by the activated sludge process as measured by the Korean COD method. The second goal of this work was to identify any troublesome or recalcitrant components which may contribute to the effluent COD by passing through the biotreatment process.
