So far, studies on the biodegradability of flotation collectors
have seldom been reported. However, the biodegradation of fatty
amines (Araujo et al., 2010) and oil (Haus et al., 2004) have been
widely studied. Therefore, in the present investigation, the biodegradation
of sodium diethyldithiocarbamate, ammonium butyldithiophosphate,
n-butyl xanthate and ethylthionocarbamate have
been studied. Activated sludge used as inoculum was collected
from a wastewater treatment plant located in Wuhan, PR China.
The wastewater treated in this plant contains 80% domestic sewage.
The utility of biodegradation kinetics process is illustrated.