One of the most important wastewater treatment processes is microelectrolysis, which is extensively used in the primary treatment of pharmaceutical wastewater. In this study, microelectrolysis, as a pretreatment method for the refractory metronidazole pharmaceutical wastewater (MPW) of choice, was improved using the Fenton process and used to remove the chemical oxygen demand (COD) and improve the biochemical capability of MPW. The results showed that the highest COD removal of 40.8% was obtained in the presence of optimized significant factors and the BI (BI = biochemical oxygen demand over five days/COD) of MPW increased from 0.10 to 0.31. In addition, the ultraviolet–visible (UV–Vis) spectroscopy demonstrated that metronidazole in MPW was effectively removed during the combined processes. All these results showed that microelectrolysis combined with Fenton oxidation for MPW was an effective treatment process to achieve higher COD removal and biodegradability improvement. Finally, the breakthrough curves at different flow rates were measured to prove the feasibility of the combined process under optimal conditions.

微电解是最重要的废水处理工艺之一，微电解已广泛用于制药废水的初级处理。在这项研究中，微电解作为难处理的甲硝唑制药废水（MPW）的预处理方法，使用Fenton工艺进行了改进，并用于去除化学需氧量（COD）和提高MPW的生化能力。结果表明，在优化的重要因素存在下，最高的COD去除率为40.8％，MPW的BI（BI = 5天生化需氧量/ COD）从0.10增加到0.31。此外，紫外-可见（UV-Vis）光谱表明，在联合过程中，有效去除了MPW中的甲硝唑。所有这些结果表明，微电解与Fenton氧化相结合用于MPW是实现更高的COD去除率和改善生物降解性的有效处理工艺。最后，测量了不同流速下的穿透曲线，以证明在最佳条件下组合工艺的可行性。