Quality and Treatment of Sugar Industry Effluent -A Study

Abstract

The sugar industry is facing an enormous problem to manage a massive quantity of effluent generation and its pollution load. The objective of the study is to discuss the sustainable treatment to reduce pollution load and discharge the effluent as per the prescribed standard of CPCB. A study was conducted on one sugar industry (M/S. DCM Shriram Limited, Uttar Pradesh, India). The efficiency of ETP was assessed with respect to parameters like pH, TSS, TDS, BOD, COD, and sulphate in two different setups, before (November 13, 2018 to March 24, 2019) and after (November 13, 2019 to March 24, 2020) the installation of the tube settler unit in the activated sludge treatment process. There was not much variation in pH. The study revealed that after the installation of the tube settler unit, the quality of the treated effluent was improved and parameters like TSS, TDS, BOD, COD, and sulphate removal efficiency were increased from 69 to 87%, 42 to 63%, 79 to 94%, 75 to 85% and 20 to 64% respectively. The sugar industry effluent could meet statutory (surface waters and land disposal) standard of Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB, 2016). The heavy metals (HM) of effluent stored at lagoon were evaluated for common HM like Zn, Fe, Cu and Cd.  The contamination factor (Cf) with respect to HM suggested that Zn, Fe and Cd falls under the category of moderate and Cu fall under the category of considerable contamination.