Utilização da respirometria para avaliar o grau de toxicidade de poluentes prioritários em sistemas biológicos de tratamento de águas residuárias.

Abstract

Industrial effluent treatment systems, in general, receive wastewater with potentially toxic compounds, with variable nature and characteristics. The presence of such compounds can cause problems in treatment plants, leading to a reduction of the treatment efficiency. Therefore there is a necessity to know the minimum concentration of toxic material that can cause undesirable effects of the treatment. It is also necessary to know which is the main removal mechanism of the pollutants. Faced with these necessities, in this work a method was developed for evaluation of acute toxicity of specific compounds that may be present in petrochemical industrials effluent. Respirometry was used for aerobic bacteria and the specific methanogenic activity for anaerobic sludge as evaluation of the metabolic capacity of each sludge. With the aid of chromatographic tests it also was possible to make an evaluation of the predominant removal mechanism of compounds studied in this work.