Wastewater from the pharmaceutical industry mainly includes four categories: antibiotic production wastewater, synthetic drug production wastewater, Chinese patent medicine production wastewater, and washing water and flushing wastewater in the production process of various preparations. Pharmaceutical wastewater is a high-concentration organic wastewater that is difficult to treat, which is characterized by complex composition, many types of organic pollutants, high concentration, high CODcr and BOD5 values and large fluctuations, deep color, high salt content, high toxicity, and many substances that are difficult to degrade and microbial growth inhibitors, and the biochemical properties are very poor.

1. Category of pharmaceutical wastewater
   The pharmaceutical industry is a key industry in China's water pollutant discharge, and pollutant discharge seriously endangers the safety of the water environment, which is one of the focus issues reflected by the masses and the focus of supervision by environmental protection departments at all levels. At present, according to the "Pharmaceutical Industry Water Pollutant Discharge Standards", the pharmaceutical industry wastewater is divided into six categories according to the type: fermentation, chemical synthesis, extraction, traditional Chinese medicine, bioengineering, and mixed preparations.

2. The generation and characteristics of pharmaceutical wastewater     
   The production of a drug, especially the production process of APIs, often includes several or even more than a dozen steps of reaction, the use of several or even dozens of raw materials, the unit consumption of raw materials is as high as 200:1, and most of these raw materials are discharged from the production system to the external environment in the form of "wastewater". These "wastewater" pollutants are high, toxic and contain substances that are difficult to biodegrade, if not properly treated, they will damage the water body and ecological environment, and have a serious impact on the survival and living environment of human beings, so it is very important to effectively treat and eliminate the impact of these "wastewater".     

3. Process description

   The treatment technology of pharmaceutical wastewater can be summarized as follows: physicochemical treatment, chemical treatment, biochemical treatment and combined treatment of multiple methods. The physicochemical methods mainly include coagulation and precipitation, air flotation, adsorption, electrolysis and membrane separation. The chemical methods mainly include catalytic iron electrolysis, ozone oxidation and Fenton reagent method; The biochemical methods mainly include orderly batch activated sludge method (SBR), ordinary activated sludge method, biological contact oxidation method, upflow anaerobic sludge bed method (UASB), etc. However, the effect of the above-mentioned single treatment method is not good, and the effluent quality is unstable, and a variety of processes are usually used to combine treatment to ensure a stable treatment effect.

4. the process flow   

   According to the characteristics of this type of wastewater, our company usually adopts a combination of multiple methods of process route. Pretreatment is divided into quality and diversion to improve the biodegradability of each strand of wastewater, eliminate or reduce the inhibition of toxic substances on the biochemical system, and then mix for biochemical treatment, biochemical generally adopts anaerobic and aerobic combination of process, advanced treatment generally chooses chemical strong oxidation or deep biological oxidation and other processes.