Waste Treatment Practices
Shampoo manufacturing companies produces hair care shampoo which also means that this factory produces pollution, wastewater, solid waste, air pollution, and noise pollution. As a Chemical Engineer, it is our job to treat waste that was produced along the process.
In order to meet a certain standard of wastewater effluent discharge, wastewater treatment plant should be implemented. Wastewater is collected and mixed together from washing operation, cleaning, laboratory experiment, and domestic wastewater.
Factories and other industrial installations have caused air pollution by burning fuels, carrying out chemical process and releasing dust and other particulates. In this kind of factory, gas emission, NOx, SOx, dust and soot and aerosol is emitted to the atmosphere, but the amount varies depending on how big or small the factory is. In connection with this, air pollution can be controlled through installation of filters and scrubbers to clean exhaust fumes from factory processes, and by taking steps to minimize pollution at the source.
Solid waste is another pollution factor present in a factory. Most of the solid wastes are cardboards, bottles, plastics, and food and yard waste. The recyclable materials such as plastics, cardboards, and bottles can be sold to a recycling shop, while food and yard waste are collected by municipal solid waste collectors.
Aside from these three main pollutions, noise pollution is also found within the industrial unit. Most of noise came from blending machine and filling machine. This problem can be resolved by putting these processes in a closed room and all workers have to use ear plugs or ear mufflers.
A. Wastewater
Wastewater refers to the water discharged after used which contains the characteristics as shown in table_. Wastewater treatment plant consists of primary, secondary, and tertiary treatment (Appendix _). Also, sludge dewatering and disposal is implemented.
A.1 Pre-treatment
To reduce abrasion and prevent damage to pumps, piping and sludge dewatering equipment, rough slid such as plastics, cardboards, and papers must be removed from the water effluents. For example, Mechanical Bar Screens and Equalization and Neutralization can be used for the operation. Equalization and Neutralization plays an important role of storing waste water coming from the process in batch operation and adjusting the pH between 6.5 and 8.0 to prevent disturbance to secondary biological treatment system.
A.2 Primary Treatment
The main objective of primary treatment in the factory is to remove the portion of SS and oil grease. Floatation process is used to separate solid or liquid particle and concentrate biosolids. Among the three unit operations- dissolved air floatation, dispersed air floatation, cavitation floatation- dissolved air floatation is used which consists of dissolved air under pressure of several atmospheres introduced at the bottom of the tank, scrapper at the bottom and skimmer at the top of the tank to collect all solid and to remove all the floating matter (oil and grease).
A.3 Secondary Treatment
Secondary treatment is intended to remove BOD associated with dissolved organic material in effluent and normally uses biological processes. The biological treatment process can convert much of the dissolved organic material in effluent to water, carbon dioxide or organic suspended solids with an expected 70-95% BOD removal.
The process of treating the wastewater (Suspended growth biological treatment) consists of the following three components: (1) a reactor in which the microorganisms responsible for treatment are kept in suspension and aerated; (2) liquid-solid separation, usually in a sedimentation tank; and (3) a recycle system for returning solids removed from the liquid-solids separation unit back to the reactor. The excess sludge from the secondary sedimentation tank is collected to sludge thickener in order to increase the solid content of dewatering process.
A.4 Tertiary Treatment
The components remaining after primary and secondary treatment are residual SS, BOD, color, and some other trace elements. Tertiary treatment (activated carbon adsorption) is designed to remove these components. The main purpose of using the activated carbon adsorption is to remove the color of the effluent treated water so re-using it for the cooling tower, fire fighting, floor washing, gardening, and road cleaning be possible.
B. Air Pollution
It is easier to deal with air pollution if a plant is equipped with all modern facilities and new technologies. Usually, air pollution is found from the boiler, by using heavy oil, and in a weighting room.
C. Solid Waste
The solid waste that is common in making shampoo as mentioned earlier are plastics, cardboards, and papers from production process and the office and food waste from canteen. Paper, plastic, and cardboard should be separated from waste and can be sold for recycling. The other solid wastes can be collected by the municipal solid waste system. In order to properly dispose these solid wastes a chart can be used to be guided about the production as well as the unit responsible for disposing it.
D. Noise Pollution
In shampoo production process, noise is mainly produced by dissolved tanks, boilers, mixers, and filling machines. Though this is not a serious environmental issue compared to those mentioned above, if we consider the cosmetic industry where we have size reduction processes, it will produce much more noise than the shampoo production alone. So, a separate sound proof rooms to keep those units which produces noise pollution will be a good solution as well as requiring the workers to wear personal protective equipment such as ear plugs and mufflers provided by the company.
Thanks for stopping by hope you learned something❤
