Evaluation of Treatment Efficiency and Agricultural Suitability of Effluents from Bedele Brewery Share Company

Abstract

In the world, brewing industry is one of an important industrial sector for food, economics, and employment. In the brewing industries water has a broad application in the entries process. However, after the entering of water to the sector, huge amount of water discharged as a wastewater. Bedele Brewery Share Company is one of the brewing industry in Bedele, Ethiopia and it treats its effluent before discharges into the nearby environments which can serve as an irrigation source for downstream farmers. In this study some physic-chemical, as well as biological parameters were analyzed accordingly. Amongst of physical parameters; temperature, pH, turbidity and EC were determined on-site by mercury thermometer, multimeter, Palin test, and multimeter respectively. A parameters such as; TS, TDS, TSS and VSS were determined by the gravimetric method in the laboratory. From the chemical parameters phosphate was determined by spectroscopic method and chloride as well as COD was determined by titration through Mohr’s method. BOD and from the biological parameters (microorganisms) were determined by incubation and dilution methods respectively. The percentage removal of most parameters was above 86% in three different days with slight variations in each parameter. The highest percentage removal was achieved for EC (87.08%), followed by TDS, TS and TSS (94.81%, 94.47% and 95.87%), in three days respectively. The results demonstrate that no statistically significant differences were found between results conducted in a three different days for each parameter. However, further improvement has been required for the treatment plant.