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Lead removal and toxicity reduction from industrial wastewater through biological sulfate reduction process

The practicability of lead removal from sulfate-rich wastewater through biological sulfate reduction process with hydrogen as electron donor was investigated. Sulfide, which was converted from sulfate by a sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) in a gas-lift reactor, was used to remove lead as lead sulfide precipitate. Furthermore, the toxicity of wastewater in terms of whole effluent toxicity (WET) before and after treatment was analyzed by using Microtox analyzer. The experiment was divided into three stages as follows: Stage I, startup and operation of sulfidogenic process fed with synthetic wastewater in a gas-lift reactor; Stage II, operation of sulfidogenic process fed with real wastewater in the same reactor and analysis of toxicity; and Stage III, separation of lead from wastewater. In stage I, the volumetric sulfate-sulfur loading rate was gradually increased from 1.0 g/L·d until no improvement of sulfide-sulfur production efficiency was evident at 2.58 g/L·d and maximum sulfide-sulfur concentration was set to 340 mg/L. In stage II, the results showed that the laboratory scale reactor could treat a real wastewater without inhibition or any remarkable problem. The produced sulfide-sulfur, 200 mg/L, was a little less in comparison with that of the previous stage. It could be due to the higher concentration of total dissolved solid (TDS). However, the sulfate concentration was still reduced by approximately 30%. The WET test by Microtox showed that toxicity was reduced more than 13 times. In stage III, the effluent from the reactor containing sulfide-sulfur of about 200 mg/L and lead-containing solution of 20 mg/L were fed with sulfide to lead ratio 3 moles: 1 mole into the precipitation chamber in which the optimum pH for lead sulfide precipitation of 8.0 was maintained. It was found that lead removal of 99% was attained.