In recent years, under the high pressure of energy conservation and environmental protection, heavy polluting enterprises such as pharmaceuticals must carry out necessary treatment of pollutants before they can be discharged. It is understood that pharmaceutical wastewater has the characteristics of complex composition, multiple types of organic pollutants, high concentration, and contains difficult to biodegrade and toxic substances, making it one of the more difficult industrial wastewater to treat. How to treat pharmaceutical wastewater and ensure its discharge meets the standards is a difficult problem for environmental protection today.

Industry experts analyze that the difficulty in treating pharmaceutical wastewater lies in the fact that certain components in the wastewater may inhibit the growth of microorganisms, further reducing the biodegradability of the wastewater and making the effluent not meet discharge standards. Therefore, improving biodegradability is the main problem faced by pharmaceutical companies in the process of pharmaceutical wastewater treatment. At present, the treatment methods for pharmaceutical wastewater mainly include physical and chemical methods, chemical methods, biochemical methods, and combined treatment processes.

Among them, physical and chemical methods can be used as pretreatment methods to improve the biodegradability of wastewater, and can also be used as advanced treatment methods to ensure that the effluent meets discharge standards. The main physical and chemical treatment methods include coagulation, adsorption, air flotation, ion exchange, and membrane separation.

Chemical method is a traditional method for wastewater treatment, currently commonly used methods include oxidation, electrolysis, and oxidation.

However, in the process of pharmaceutical wastewater treatment, biochemical methods often cannot achieve the expected treatment effect by using aerobic or anaerobic biological treatment methods alone. Therefore, a combination of multiple methods is commonly used to achieve discharge standards.

Currently, many pharmaceutical companies have their own methods for treating pharmaceutical wastewater. For example, Yangtze River Pharmaceutical follows the principle of classification and attempts to recycle pharmaceutical wastewater to achieve full process control.

For active pharmaceutical ingredients, Yangtze River Pharmaceutical classifies waste liquids during the production process and separates them into single component and multi-component treatments to reduce the processing pressure of the sewage treatment system and the difficulty of waste liquid disposal.

For traditional Chinese medicine wastewater, Yangzijiang Pharmaceutical classifies and collects high concentration and low concentration wastewater generated during the production process, reducing the cost of sewage treatment while improving the treatment efficiency of sewage treatment facilities.

For devices involving the use, transportation, or storage of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) materials, Yangtze River Pharmaceutical uses leak detection and repair (LDAR) technology to detect the sealing points of equipment and pipelines, effectively controlling the leakage of VOCs.

In terms of pollutant treatment processes and facilities, Yangzijiang Pharmaceutical prioritizes the use of good domestic and foreign processes or facilities for pharmaceutical wastewater treatment, and strives to recycle the discharged effluent as much as possible. If it cannot be recycled, it can achieve lower discharge concentrations while complying with legal standards.

In addition, the Safety and Environmental Protection Department of Yangtze River Pharmaceutical provides on-site assistance and flight inspections to its subsidiaries twice a year, fully assisting them in benchmarking and self inspection, and continuously improving.

Overall, in recent years, the pharmaceutical industry has developed rapidly, and the pharmaceutical wastewater generated has become one of the serious sources of pollution. The total amount of discharge continues to increase, and the composition is becoming increasingly complex. There are more and more new pollutants, and the treatment methods need to be diversified.

The use of a single treatment method for pharmaceutical wastewater has certain limitations, and the optimization combination of multiple technologies, such as physical and chemical methods in the early stage to reduce the toxicity of pharmaceutical wastewater, and biological methods in the core treatment to treat BOD and ammonia nitrogen in pharmaceutical wastewater, may play a better role by combining multiple treatment methods. Some pharmaceutical industry insiders suggest that pharmaceutical wastewater should be classified and treated according to its type, in order to meet emission standards and help the pharmaceutical industry win the 'blue sky defense war'.