Anaerobic Treatment of Effluent from Epoxy Resins Production Units

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the anaerobic treatment of effluent from epoxy resins production units through various approaches. Huge research efforts are currently in progress to enlarge the application of the anaerobic digestion to the treatment of wastewater containing inhibitory, recalcitrant molecules or having low organic load. Effluents originating from the epoxy resins production contain inhibitory and toxic molecules, which do not allow their direct biological treatment. For this reason, the current purification processes are based on chemical–physical pretreatments followed by biological oxidation steps. The anaerobic solution described in the chapter overcomes the drawbacks of these processes (strong dilution, high consumption of electric power, high sludge production) and offers several advantages, such as strong reduction of the required dilutions, almost negligible consumption of electric power and significant production of biogas, and recovery of sodium chloride and the consequent elimination of the legal problems related to the salt and chloride contents in the treated wastewater.