Combination of chemical and biological processes to enhance the treatment of hardly biodegradable matter in industrial wastewater: Selection parameters and performances

The increasing complexity of industrial effluents, combined with the increase in discharge constraints, leads to the necessity to improve processes treatment. Apart from new processes, the combination and optimization of existing processes could be the answer to these questions. Regarding coupling processes, the purifying potential has been demonstrated for a large range of processes, pollutants, and effluents. However, there has been a lack of studies integrating a biological process, although this has increased since 2000. The objective of this review is to focus on the combination of chemical and biological treatments for industrial applications and to provide recommendations based on different examples from the literature.