With the growing awareness of its responsibilities towards environment protection, the pharmaceutical industry in India is now adopting new technologies especially with regard to wastewater treatment.
Unlike its early days, the pharma industry is fast shedding its carefree attitude with regard to environment protection. Many pharma units are investing heavily in installing in-house zero discharge effluent systems and wastewater systems to ensure environmental protection and in reducing pollution discharge to the environment.
During the past one decade many technological advancements, have been taking place especially in the areas of wastewater treatment technology. Today most of the industries are equipping themselves with sophisticated in-house effluent treatment systems and have reduced pollution loads drastically.
A drug manufacturing factory of the yore could bring to mind the images of a Dickensian novel of long chimneys fuming huge black clouds of smoke polluting the surrounding air unfit for inhaling.
The stinking smell, the unhygienic surroundings with black, blue or green ponds of chemically harmful liquid discharge pollutants seeping into the ground and contaminating the water tables make the nearby agricultural lands unfit for cultivation.
Having experienced the repercussions of paying a short shrift to environment, today the industry in India has learned its responsibilities and has been working along with welfare societies, NGOs and the government to protect the environment. In this regard the bulk drug and related pharmaceutical industries have been investing heavily to build not only in -house wastewater treatment equipment but also co-operating with the state and central government regulatory bodies to come out with best possible solutions to tackle the contentious issues of pollution control.
In Andhra Pradesh two important green parks Pharma Special Economic Zones (SEZ) have been established. One is at Pollepally in Jadcheral Mandal of Mahabubnagar district and the other is the Jawaharlal Pharma city located in Visakhapatnam district. These pharma parks have been built on the ideal theme of green environment and have built not only the common effluent treatment plants but have also installed in -house wastewater treatment and zero effluent discharge systems.
“In order to build the wastewater treatment plants and other required infrastructure for pollution control, the pharma industry in the state has invested almost Rs. 250-300 crores during the past few years.
We are also working in coordination with PCB and water and sewerage board and have built underground pipelines linking PETL (Patancheru effluent treatment plant) to Amberpet effluent treatment facility. We are also pursuing with the government to build common effluent treatment plants at various clusters in Nalgonda and Medak districts so that small and medium industries can dump their effluents locally without having to transport long distances incurring huge costs,” said Nityanand Reddy, President BDMA.
These changes would not have come without the efforts of the state and central pollution control boards, the NGOs and social activists. However it is only a beginning. A lot more needs to be done. Already as we are facing the wrath of climate change, structural changes right from the beginning has to be addressed to eradicate pollution and from the industry point of view, advanced technology should be adopted to treat and recycle the wastewater and minimize the liquid pollution discharges.
Today pharmaceutical manufacturing industry produces a wide range of products to be used as human and animal medications. Manufacturing is characterized by five main processes: fermentation, extraction, chemical synthesis, formulation and packaging. Each of these steps may generate air emissions, liquid effluents and solid wastes. Liquid effluents resulting from equipment cleaning after batch operation contain toxic organic residues. Their composition varies, depending on the product manufactured, the materials used in the process, and other process details.
Hence on the one side while the pharma industry is giving us life saving drugs, on the other its harmful effluents are causing health hazards..
The wastewater generated from pharmaceutical industry generally contain high organic load and the treatment is primarily carried out using two major types of biological methods; aerobic and anaerobic.
However, due to high strength, many a time it is not feasible to treat pharmaceutical wastewater using aerobic biological processes. As an alternative, an anaerobic process is preferred to remove high strength organic matter.
Anaerobic wastewater treatment is considered as the most cost-effective solution for organically polluted industrial waste streams. In particular the development of high rate systems, in which hydraulic retention times (HRT) are uncoupled from solids retention times (SRT), has led to a worldwide acceptance of anaerobic wastewater treatment.
Typically, pharmaceutical wastewater is characterized by high COD concentration and sometimes can have COD as high as 80,000 mg.L-1.
Pharmaceutical wastes pose potential risks to the aquatic environment such as endocrine disrupting and side effects since they initially cause specific biological effects. Furthermore, wastewater produced from antibiotic manufacture and formulation; generally contain high levels of soluble organics, many of which are recalcitrant. If these compounds are not removed by one-site treatment they will be discharged to sewage treatment plants (STPs). This then eventually could disturb the biological process and the microbial ecology in the STP and the receiving surface waters.
Widespread work into the occurrence and fate of pharmaceuticals in the environment has been carried out in recent years. Many environmental scientists have been working to contain pollution.
Pharma wastewater treatment methods
There have been many methods adopted by the industry to treat and recycle the wastewater. Effluent from pharmaceutical wastewater is normally treated using methods like flocculation, flotation, coagulation, filtration, settling, ion exchange, carbon adsorption, detoxification of active ingredients by oxidation (using ozone wet air oxidation ultraviolet systems or peroxide solutions), and biological treatment (using trickling filters, anaerobic, activated sludge, and rotating biological contactors).
Although pharmaceutical wastewater may contain refractory organic materials that cannot be readily degraded, biological treatment is still a viable choice for treatment. However, due to high strength, it is infeasible to treat some pharmaceutical wastewater using aerobic biological processes. Instead an anaerobic process can be preferred to remove high-strength organic matter. Recently, the anaerobic treatment of pharmaceutical wastewater containing antibiotics and synthetic drug based effluents has been adopted by many industries.
The pharmaceutical companies like Dr. Reddy’s, Aurobindo and Hetero have installed most sophisticated and advanced wastewater effluent treatment plants in their units. “We have been spending almost Rs. 8-10 crores to install the in-house zero process effluent treatment systems. Sophisticated and advanced systems like zero discharge strippers, ATFD, EIP have been installed at our units to ensure absolute null pollution,” said Rajeshekar, GM, Hetero Drugs Ltd.
In the recent past, the Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board has been taking strict actions not only on the pharmaceutical and drug manufacturers but also on nursing homes, hospitals and hotels that are generating harmful and hazardous wastes into the common sewerage pipelines. Recently the PCB had issued notices to all nursing homes in Hyderabad and had also booked cases against the Taj Banjara five star hotels for dumping waste from the common sewerage into the lake behind without treating the wastes.
In view of the increasing awareness among the common public and with more interventions of the regulatory bodies like PCB and sewerage board authorities, in the coming days, all these institutions will have to install their own wastewater in-house treatment plants which will not only minimize the pollution loads at the generation centres but will also ensure reduction of loads at the main treatment plant and thus protect the environment in the long run.