Economic evaluation for anoxic biological system integrated with external membrane for pharmaceutical wastewater treatment

Abstract The integrated system of biological treatment (anoxic /activated sludge ) and ultrafiltration membrane economic study was investigated. The biological treatment results indicate that the performance of pharmaceutical industrial wastewater treatment using activated sludge with an anoxic zone was enhanced by increasing the ability of the pre-acclimatized activated sludge to degrade organic compounds in the industrial wastewater. The residues compounds from biologically treated water were treated by UF membrane and gave a separation efficiency of 99.4%. The results indicate that using the (anoxic /activated sludge) biological treatment step as a pretreatment step before the membrane can provide high-efficiency removal of the contamination of all drug compounds in the wastewater. An economic evaluation of the system was investigated and the calculations indicate that the unit capital cost of the estimated system per cubic meter was 1.27 $/m 3 , which was lower than the estimated traditional cost.