ABSTRACT
Industrialization across the globe has resulted in the contamination of soils, groundwater, sediments, surface water, and air with hazardous and toxic chemicals, which is one of the major problems to be resolved by the research presently being carried out globally. Providing clean and affordable water to meet human needs is another grand challenge of
CONTENTS
7.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 157 7.1.1 Major Challenges in Industrial Wastewater Treatment ................................... 158
7.2 Conventional Bioprocesses ............................................................................................... 159 7.3 Advanced Bioprocesses ..................................................................................................... 160
7.3.1 Biohydrogen Production ....................................................................................... 160 7.3.2 Photo Fermentation ............................................................................................... 160 7.3.3 Anammox Process ................................................................................................. 161
7.4 Types of Bioreactors ........................................................................................................... 162 7.4.1 Free Suspended Cell Technology ........................................................................ 163
7.4.1.1 Anaerobic Digesters (AD) ...................................................................... 163 7.4.1.2 Continuous Stirred Tank Reactors (CSTR) .......................................... 163 7.4.1.3 Sequencing Batch Reactors (SBR) .......................................................... 163
7.4.2 Immobilized Cell Technology .............................................................................. 164 7.4.2.1 Upow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) Reactors .......................... 164 7.4.2.2 Biolters .................................................................................................... 166 7.4.2.3 Microbial Fuel Cells (MFC) ................................................................... 166 7.4.2.4 Moving Bed Biolm Reactors (MBBR) ................................................. 167 7.4.2.5 Packed Bed Bioreactors (PBR)................................................................ 167 7.4.2.6 Membrane Bioreactors (MBR) ............................................................... 167
7.5 The Main Challenges Associated with Bioreactors ...................................................... 168 7.6 Technology Integrations and Advanced Bioprocesses ................................................. 169
7.6.1 Bioelectrochemical Systems (BES) ....................................................................... 169 7.6.2 Nanotechnology ..................................................................................................... 171 7.6.3 Bioaugmentation .................................................................................................... 172
7.7 Constructed Wetlands ....................................................................................................... 172 7.8 Conclusions ......................................................................................................................... 173 References ..................................................................................................................................... 175
the twenty-rst century. The more the world industrializes, the more are the waste generation and contamination problems. In general, groundwater represents about 98% of the available fresh water on the planet and thus, protecting and restoring groundwater quality is of high importance. Water supply across the globe struggles to keep up with the fast growing demand, which is exacerbated by population growth, global climate change, and water quality deterioration. This widespread problem represents a signicant technical and economic challenge. Globally, a huge amount of capital and resources is being spent for treating trillions of litres of wastewater annually, consuming signicant amounts of energy (ElMekawy et al., 2013, 2014a,b). Therefore, there is a need for developing a wider application of cost-effective, in situ remediation approaches that take advantage of natural phenomena, such as bioremediation. Biological treatment is an important and integral part of any wastewater treatment plant that treats wastewater that has soluble organic impurities or a mix of the two sources from either municipality or industry (Pant and Adholeya, 2007). The economic advantage of biological treatment over other treatment processes such as chemical oxidation, thermal oxidation, etc., in terms of capital investment and operating costs has established its place in any integrated wastewater treatment plant (Mittal, 2011). The current chapter describes the major existing challenges of industrial wastewater treatment and how advanced biological processes are dealing with them. The role of different bioreactors in treating industrial efuents has also been discussed in detail including recent advances.
