Conceptual Design Approach for Treating High Strength Phenol and Formalin Wastewater

Abstract Industrial effluents containing appreciable amounts of phenol and formalin may represent a problem when these effluents undergoing biological treatment. Experience in field of biological treatment for wastewater contains high concentrations of formalin showed high inhibition effect of formalin to biodegradation, specifically at higher concentrations more than 225 mg/L [3]. Also, as phenol is toxic to biological culture [7], therefore, biological culture for wastewater containing high phenol concentration, more than 250 mg/L, is just a risk. In this paper, a problem of treating industrial wastewater contains high concentrations of both phenol and formaldehyde was encountered. As the biological treatment of such wastewater was expected to be difficult, sources of wastewater effluent were monitored, and in-site pre-chemical treatment for both phenol and formalin was designed, and experienced. With phenol and formalin being chemically oxidized and changed to either non-toxic or biodegradable constituents, entering these effluents to simple biological treatment is, therefore, found more convenient.