Performance Evaluation of Industrial Waste Water Treatment Plant of White Nile Tannery

Abstract

One of the most hazardous pollutants to the environment is those produced from the industrial activities, and tanneries are one of the sources of the environmental pollution for their production of toxic and carcinogenic wastes such as chromium. The main objective of this study was to assess the performance of the industrial wastewater treatment plant of White Nile tannery. The performance was evaluated in terms of the characteristics of the wastewater disposing in the sewage network after passing through the primary treatment plant, such as biological oxygen demand(BOD) ,chemical oxygen demand(COD),total suspended solid(TSS),total dissolved solid(TDS) ,oil and greases ,PH, and chrome(Cr).the results obtained showed that the minimum concentration of BOD ,COD, TDS and pH after treatment are ( 620 , 1600,5820 mg/l and 7) respectively, these values doesn't meet the requirement of the Sudanese standards for the disposal of industrial wastewater in the sewage network except the TSS, the maximum concentration of TSS it is 340 mg/l . So the high values of BOD and COD after treatment compared with the standard limits indicate that the biological treatment is not efficient, therefore The BOD and COD removal efficiency should be increased by mixing sewage with industrial wastewater to increase the amount of microorganisms, and the duration of treatment should be increased also from 16 hr to 32 hr to reduce concentrations of organic pollutants, but the sedimentation process works efficiently according to TSS values. There is a variation in Cr values, some values meet the requirement of the Sudanese standard and others are higher than the allowable limit, therefore, there is a need for a unit in the treatment plant to recover the chromium (Cr) and reuse of it in the tanning process again.