Bacteria for Pharmaceutical Effluent Treatment

Pharmaceutical wastewater often has high levels of organic compounds that are toxic to bacteria. It contains low concentrations of APIs, excipients, and significant concentrations of solvents and salts. Since pharmaceutical wastewater contains microbicidal compounds, it is challenging to treat it with non-specific bacteria. Besides this, the effluent from the pharmaceutical manufacturing unit usually has a low Carbon to Nitrogen ratio and has high levels of suspended solids and sulfate compounds.

The pharmaceutical wastewater we treated here also had the additional challenge of having orange coloured pigment coming in the wastewater. The orange colour came from the water used to wash the tablet coating pan. Since the microbial activity was very low in the wastewater, there was hardly any reduction in both the COD and the colour of the treated water. It was time to use a specialised bacterial culture.

Bacteria in Evobac are designed to withstand toxicity in wastewater and degrade solvents that are not degraded by general bacteria. Evobac contains a mixture of several aerobic and anoxic bacteria that work synergistically with each other. While some bacteria in the bioculture mix degraded the toxic organic compounds, others could thrive and break down the chromophores of the pigments. Reducing both the COD and the colour.

With a well designed bacterial mix like Evobac, you will be treating the pharmaceutical wastewater with flying colours. Quite literally.