Análise da Eficiência de Nitrificação em Reatores Biológicos de Leito Móvel (MBBR) em escala de bancada utilizando efluente de Refinaria de Petróleo.

Abstract

Petrochemical industrial activities, including oil refineries, are major consumers of water and thus generating large industrial wastewater containing a multitude of contaminants. In the case of Brazilian oil refineries, ammonia nitrogen has become a critical component to be treated, what has been done through biological treatment processes using nitrification as a basis. In this work, the operation of a bench scale moving bed reactor was evaluated (MBBR), using polyethylene biomedia with specific area of 820 m2.m-3, to treat an effluent from a Brazilian petroleum refinery containing high concentrations of ammonia nitrogen, was evaluated. The raw effluent contained between 100 and 300 mg.L-1 of Chemical Oxygen Demand, ammonia nitrogen content between 60 and 90 mg.L-1 and electrical conductivity between 1 and 2 mS.cm-1. Even with the variation of feed quality throughout the study, such as the increasing of concentrations of contaminants, including of typical refinery wastewater nitrification inhibitors compounds, the plant has met the legislation CONAMA 430/2011 (BRASIL, 2011), which limits the discarding concentration of ammonia nitrogen in 20 mg.L-1, in 93% of measurements. In the case of a fictitious more restrictive legislation, requiring a discharge concentration limit of 5 mg.L-1 for this contaminant, the treatment was successful in 83% of the time, with an average efficiency of 93.1% nitrification, showing that there is a real possibility to use the MBBR process in Brazilian refineries.