With an integrated catalytic wet air oxidation (CWAO) pretreatment and an anaerobic/aerobic biological treatment, a process which is capable of removing COD and BOD5 of the wastewater of VB6 production with high efficiency and a good stability was established. The following important conclusions can be made based on the experimental results from present work.
(a)
The proposed pretreatment procedure of CWAO enhanced the biodegradability of the wastewater from VB6 production.
(b)
The pilot scale anaerobic/aerobic process was capable to treat an influent with a 10,000 mg l−1 of COD coming from CWAO effluent (COD from 40,000 to 50,000 mg l−1), and it achieved a high COD removal (94.66%) and a good settleability. The aerobic system effluent obtained met the discharge standards of water pollutants for pharmaceutical industry Chemical Synthesis Products Category (GB21904-2008).