The petroleum refining process generates large quantities of wastewater that discharge of untreated wastewater into water bodies results in environmental and human health effects due to the release of toxic containments. In this study, the biological removal of ammonia from petroleum refinery wastewater in a bench-scale rotating biological contactor (RBC) under continuous operation was investigated. The experiments were conducted base on a central composite design to evaluate the effect of four significant independent variables on the performance of the system. Response surface methodology was applied to minimize the number of runs and investigating the interactive effects of variables on ammonia and chemical oxygen demand (COD) removals. The RBC was operated at different hydraulic loading rates of 0.005, 0.008, and 0.016 m³/m²d. The optimum conditions were the temperature of 32.19 °C, influent ammonia concentration of 20.54 mg/l, the flow rate of 5.57 ml/min, and discs rotational speed of 4.58 rpm for ammonia and COD removal efficiency simultaneously. The maximum removal efficiency of ammonia and COD were obtained at 99.07 % and 85.76 % respectively. Finally, our results suggest that RBC may be considered as a promising method for petroleum refinery wastewater treatment, especially in simultaneously COD and ammonia removal.

石油精炼过程会产生大量废水，未经处理的废水排放到水体中会由于释放有毒物质而对环境和人类健康产生影响。在这项研究中，研究了在连续操作的台式旋转生物接触器（RBC）中从炼油厂废水中生物去除氨的方法。实验基于中央复合设计进行，以评估四个重要的独立变量对系统性能的影响。应用了响应面方法来最小化运行次数，并研究变量对氨和化学需氧量（COD）去除的交互作用。RBC在0.005、0.008和0.016 m的不同液压负载率下运行³ / m ² d。最佳条件是温度为32.19°C，进水氨浓度为20.54 mg / l，流速为5.57 ml / min，并且圆盘转速为4.58 rpm，以同时去除氨和COD。氨和COD的最大去除率分别为99.07％和85.76％。最后，我们的结果表明，RBC可能被认为是用于炼油厂废水处理的有前途的方法，尤其是在同时去除COD和氨气中。