ANNOUNCEMENTS
Distillery spentwash is a high strength wastewater with high organic content. The problems with its disposal on land/water bodies are mainly due to its high COD and dark brown colour. Anaerobic and aerobic treatment systems commonly practiced by industries, are able to achieve a reduction in COD but no major breakthroughs have been possible regarding reduction in colour of the effluent. Although ultrafiltration and microfiltration have been successfully used to treat high strength wastewaters, membrane technologies have not been tried so far in the treatment of distillery wastewater. The emerging constraints are related to operation and maintenance, energy demand, wastewater demand, chemical demand and membrane replacement. Thus there is a need to develop low cost and efficient membrane techniques. In this project a combination of woven nylon mesh filter and unburnt carbon in bagasse fly ash has been used in the treatment of biomethanated distillery effluent. It was found that the unburnt carbon fraction in bagasse fly ash could not effect a good percentage removal of colour and COD within the experimental parameters considered. Additionally it was observed that at 2000 times dilution of the biomethanated spentwash, use of unburnt carbon fraction in bagasse fly ash as an adsorbant can produce a near colorless permeate.
