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
Process Safety and Environmental Protection Volume Issue 2014 (Doi 10.1016/j.psep.2014.04.010) Lee, Chai Siah Robinson, John Chong, Mei Fong - A Review On Application of Flocculants I PDF