Characteristics and biodegradability of olive mill wastewaters

Özlem Karahan Özgün*, Ilke Pala Özkök, Can Kutay, Derin Orhon

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Olive mill wastewaters (OMWs) are mostly characterized by their high-organic content and complex organic compounds in addition to the phenolic compounds. European olive oil manufacturers have to cope up with the same wastewater treatment problem and the applied conventional treatment technologies for OMW were not proved to be very successful in each case. Olive mills are mostly small and medium-sized installations and OMW is generated during the three-four-month-long manufacturing season. The problem is not only the complex wastewater to be treated but also the scattered positioning of the olive mills, the seasonal wastewater generation and the size of the manufacturing facilities. The aim of the study is to identify the organic content of OMW and to assess the biological and chemical treatability of OMWs, in order to assist the development of integrated chemical-biological treatment schemes for best appropriate techniques implementation. The experimental studies show that separation of the particulate fraction improved the biodegradability or reduced the refractory and inhibitory effects of particulate organics.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1240-1248
Number of pages9
JournalEnvironmental Technology (United Kingdom)
Volume37
Issue number10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 18 May 2016

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Taylor & Francis.

Funding

This work was supported by the Scientific Research Projects Unit of Istanbul Technical University under [grant number 32897].

FundersFunder number
Istanbul Teknik Üniversitesi32897

    Keywords

    • Biodegradability
    • chemical pretreatment
    • modelling
    • olive mill wastewaters (OMWs)
    • respirometry

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