Assessment of toxicity and anaerobic degradation of antiosmotic drug based pharmaceutical effluent in an upflow anaerobic fluidized bed system

During the production of cephradine (a main constituent of anti-osmotic drug) a large quantity of concentrated
effluent was produced. The main polluting compounds in this effluent are osmotic drug,
acetic acid and ammonia. The main objectives of the study were to assess the toxicity in terms of specific
methanogenic activity on anaerobic degradation of cephradine with Volatile Fatty Acid (VFA) as
co-substrate in batch systems using adapted and non-adapted cultures and to study the effect of
bioaugmentation with adapted and non-adapted cultures on anaerobic treatment of anti-osmotic drug
based pharmaceutical effluent in continuous mode using a fluidised bed reactor. The toxicity assessment
was measured in terms of specific methanogenic activity (ml CH4 g-1 VSS d-1), which was found
to decrease with increase in cephradine concentration and attained a maximum at 100 mg l-1. The COD
reduction (%) in continuous mode reached maximum of 88.5 at a Hydraulic Retention Time (HRT) of
12 h using bioaugmentation through periodic addition of 14 to 20 g l-1 of biomass (acclimated cells)
every 2 days from an off-line enricher-reactor.