Evaluación de la eficiencia de la Moringa oleífera como floculante para el tratamiento de aguas residuales

Abstract

The main objective of this curricular integration work was to evaluate the efficiency of Moringa oleifera as a flocculant for the treatment of floricultural wastewater. All stages of this project were carried out in the organic chemistry, industrial processes, and water quality laboratories in the Faculty of Sciences at ESPOCH. To achieve the objectives proposed in this work, five research stages were carried out, these are: characterization of moringa as raw material, obtaining and characterizing the natural flocculant, sampling, and characterizing the properties of raw wastewater, treatability tests with the flocculant and characterization of the properties of the treated wastewater. In the initial characterization, a moisture analysis and a phytochemical analysis of calcium and iron were carried out, important parameters at the time of carrying out this study; To obtain the natural flocculant, a series of industrial processes were carried out, such as grinding, sieving, fat extraction and drying, with a process yield of 56.56%; and for the characterization of the flocculant a proximal analysis was performed. A jar test procedure was carried out with different dosages of the flocculant obtained, the final result with the help of a statistical study was that the adequate concentration to achieve the highest percentage of removal of the parameters of the floricultural wastewater is 3000mg / L. Finally, making a comparison before and after applying the flocculant, the results were that the parameters of turbidity, faecal coliforms, phosphates, BOD5 and colour were the parameters that had the highest removal percentages, with values of .90,83%, 79, 77%, 71.84%, 65.84% and 62.79% respectively. The average efficiency of removal and adjustment of physicochemical and microbiological parameters by the Moringa oleifera flocculant to treat the wastewater from the “La Esperanza” floriculture was 67.71%.