Context:

There are currently several types of clean technologies that help the decontamination of industrial wastewater, such as activated sludge systems. These technologies have proved effective in the removal of organic matter and colloidal in domestic wastewater and industrial, biosorption of heavy metals, and removal of pathogens and nutrients (N and P). It previous motivates the proposal of work with a system of treatment of sludge activated to scale in an environment controlled, to demonstrate its effectiveness in treatment of waters with methanol.

Method:

The treatment system of activated sludge is designed and built to scale in laboratory level to study different concentrations of methanol in waste water from one industry. In assembly of five treatment systems is measured physicochemical parameters as: pH, dissolved oxygen, temperature, chemical oxygen demand, total suspended solids, and loss of methanol, at 0, 24 and 48 h by quadruplicate to observe the behavior of these parameters during the reduction of methanol.

Results:

For activated sludge systems is demonstrated an average loss of 10.3 % methanol. The averages of dissolved oxygen decrease in the time although chemical oxygen demand is variable. Each system with different concentration of methanol presents behavior.

Conclusions:

This research indicates that the biodegradation of methanol in industrial wastewater is possible, bearing in mind that the treatment system to scale was obtained a decrease of methanol in the time. In addition, the results motivate continue researching this clean technology, which does not have sufficient literature about the handling of activated sludge to the elimination of methanol.

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