191 AN OVERVIEW OF THE PHENOL LEVELS IN WASTEWATER IN THE CITY OF CAPE TOWN SMITH A City of Cape Town, Scientific Services Branch, P.O. Box 16548, Vlaeberg, 8018, Tel: (021) 684 1049, Fax (021) 6385083, e - mail:
[email protected] ABSTRACT Widespread contamination of water by phenol has been recognized as an issue of growing importance. Phenol may occur in domestic and industrial wastewaters, natural waters and potable water supplies. Chlorination of such waters may produce odorous and objectionable tasting chlorophenols. Therefore, it is necessary to eliminate as much of the phenol from the stream before discharging. The limit for phenol in the wastewater final effluent according to the General Standards Guideline is 0.1mg/l and in 2010 it will be 0.01mg/l (5). Hence, the treatment of wastewater containing phenol is a necessity. This study gives an overview of the Phenol index levels (free phenol) in wastewater in the City of Cape Town. There is no real historic data to compare the current phenol levels in the wastewater with but it can be assumed that levels will increase over time if more stringent measurements are not taken to prevent the discharge of higher levels of phenol into the rivers. There are twenty wastewater treatment plants and three marine outfalls in the City of Cape Town. The wastewater treatment plants can be classified as receiving mainly industrial or domestic wastewater or a combination of the two. The raw influent and final effluent results for each wastewater treatment plant were sampled bi- weekly and analysed for free phenol.