Water characterization at different process lines at AB Gustaf Kähr and quality requirements for wastewater

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this essay was to assist AB Gustaf Kähr with their treatment of process water. A screening test was carried out in February 2016 order to identify the most hazardous substances and two interviews are made in order to get different perspectives on the issue of companies discharging wastewater into a recipient. The report includes a description of the company AB Gustaf Kähr and as well as their permit demands. Furthermore, there is a description of the different process lines, what kind of process wastewater the industry produces as well as the most significant pollutants found in a study in 2006. Then the results from all the parameters as well as the sources found in 2006 are presented in detail as well as, the results from several previous PhD theses. The Swedish and European legislation are also studied in order to gain an understanding on what the legislation says about releasing process waste water into the recipient after it has undergone a treatment process. The methodology is explained followed by the presentation of the screening test results, results from the written and oral interviews and the shortcomings of the methodology are discussed. In the results the screening test results are interpreted. The most hazardous substances are then identified by mostly on relying on the European environmental quality norms. The mentioned results are compared to those from 2006 and the reasons behind the differences are explained. Recommendations on methods to decrease the amount of pollutants are given, these methods are ozone treatment or filtration followed by reverse osmosis. The conclusions are drawn that it is seen as viable by several people for industries too clean their own wastewater and that the environmental limit values should be used when determining if an effluent is clean enough too release.