Sustainable technology solutions for reuse of process wastewaters from fine chemical industries

In the fine chemical industries, especially in the pharmaceutical industry, production technology generates large amounts of liquid waste and industrial waste solvents. Separation of various organic substances used in industry, such as adsorbable organic halides (AOX), from industrial wastewater is an important task of environmental protection. In this work, two technologies were compared to investigate the recycling/reuse of organic material of process wastewaters. The analysis was based on real case study from fine chemical industry. The separation efficiency, operational parameters and cost analysis were carried out to examine stripping and distillation technologies. The calculation was achieved in professional flowsheet simulator environment. According to the results, it can be determined there is no significant difference in separation efficiency of wastewater output streams. However, in the case of distillation technology, the reuse of halides can be possible inside the factory, so this is the recommended procedure for environmental protection. The cost of recovery technologies is also compared with waste incineration. These calculations also demonstrate the effectiveness of the treatment methods, because with recovery technologies it is possible to obtain a reduction of up to 85% compared to incineration