Applicability of anthraquinone-2,6-disulfonate (AQDS) to enhance colour removal in mesophilic UASB reactors treating textile wastewater

Abstract

This work assessed the applicability of the redox mediator anthraquinone-2,6-disulfonate (AQDS) to enhance colour removal in mesophilic UASB reactors treating textile wastewater under different operational conditions, such as different electron donor (ethanol) concentrations and different HRT. The anaerobic reactors were able to remove reasonably well the colour of the textile wastewater (35-63%) even when operated with a relatively short HRT (6 h), being a good option for textile effluents pre-treatment. Aditionally, colour removal efficiency was positively influenced not only by the addition of ethanol as external electron donor, but also by the initial wastewater absorbance. Although the applicability of AQDS is reported in the literature to enhance remarkably colour removal from synthetic dye-containing wastewaters, especially for recalcitrant azo dyes, the same effect was not evident in the present study with the textile wastewater tested, since the reactors did not show significant differences on decolourisation capacity.