Evaluación preliminar del efecto del quitosano y cascara de naranja en la coagulación-floculación de aguas residuales

Waste water disposed in a superficial current, lakes, rivers, the sea, without any treatment, causes great inconvenient pollution that affects the flora and fauna of a region. This wastewater, before being poured into the receiving body of water, must receive the appropriate treatment, in order to modify its physical, chemical and microbiological conditions, to avoid that its disposal causes the alteration and degrada-tion of the associated ecosystems and problem with public health. This research had as an objective to assess the ef-fect of chitosan and aqueous extract of orange peel shells at different concentrations on the coagulation-flocculation pro-cess of wastewater. In order to do this, a jar test with fast and slow pull was carried out, assessing turbidity (NTU), chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), total suspended solids (TSS) and SS (solid sediments). The results showed that all the treatments presented significant differences (p<0.05) to the control sample, and were effi-cient in the decrease of NTU, DQO, DBO, SST, and SS. The treatment that combined chitosan and aqueous extract of orange peel (50-50%) at a pH or 5.5, decreased significantly (p<0.05) the turbidity in a 79%, showing in a preliminary way that the aqueous extract of orange peel shells acidifies the mix and increases the formation of agglomerated floccules in a light phase of the samples, becoming an efficient agent to be used in the treatment of wastewater.