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PAMANTASAN NG LUNGSOD NG MAYNILA

University of the City of Manila


College of Engineering and Technology
Department of Chemical Engineering

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY


Wastewater treatment is now integral to the modern world. It is a process to
convert waste water into an effluent that can be returned to the water cycle with
minimal environmental issues. Wastewater, which is created from daily residential and
industrial activities, is composed of various contaminants which can cause
environmental issues if returned into a receiving body of water. In order to safely
discharge it as effluent, it is required to undergo various treatment such as physical,
chemical or biological treatment. Of these three, chemical treatment requires the
wastewater to undergo flocculation. In this process, a flocculant is added to the
wastewater in order to cause fine particles to aggregate and accelerate the formation
of flocs.
Flocculants, as used in treatment, cannot be reused. Therefore, a constant
supply of flocculant is required to be consumed by water and wastewater treatment
facilities. Moreover, sodium polystyrene sulfonate, a flocculant, can be produced from
polystyrene through extraction, sulfonation and neutralization.
Polystyrene is a synthetic aromatic hydrocarbon polymer and is one of the most
common types of plastic being produced today. Polystyrene has the recycling number
6 which is used to identify it and separate it from other plastics during segregation.
According to the report of DENR National Solid Waste Management Commission
(2014), municipal solid waste consists of 10.55% plastics on average, and out of this
amount, 23.54 to 32.92% are segregated from general municipal solid waste.
Furthermore, according to a study conducted by Law et al. (2017), about 10% of the
plastics are polystyrene. This amounts to 43577 metric tons of polystyrene being
recovered through segregation and collection locally. However, due to the minimal
applications of recycling polystyrene, it is either incinerated or thrown into landfills.
Considering the need for flocculants and the amount of polystyrene being
recovered, the researchers proposed the study entitled “Sulfonation of Reclaimed
Styrofoam For the Production of Sodium Polystyrene Sulfonate”.

Catalytic Conversion of Trihydroxypropane derived from Crude


Glycerol for the Production of Epichlorohydrin Title Proposal 1
Dionisio, Mendoza, Raymundo, Saligue, Yumul

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