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Brewery wastewater treatment using aerobic sequencing batch reactors with mixed culture activated sludge Ling, Luqiong

Abstract

Laboratory-scale aerobic sequencing batch reactors, in both suspended-growth and attached-growth modes, were used to study the treatment of brewery wastewater. A Ringlaces material was selected and employed for the attached-growth reactors. Experiments were conducted employing a wide range of hydraulic retention times, from 0.56 to 6.06 days. The experimental results demonstrated that brewery wastewater could be successfully treated using both suspended-growth and attached-growth aerobic sequencing batch reactors. Treatment efficiencies in terms of the removals of total organic carbon (TOC), the five days biological demand (BOD5), chemical oxygen demand (COD), and suspended solids (SS) were consistently maintained over 90%, with the suspended-growth reactors performing significantly better than the attached-growth reactors. As the results of these experiments demonstrated that the performance of suspended-growth SBRs was superior to that of attached-growth SBRs, only the suspended-growth SBR system was selected to study the optimal conditions of HRT and loading rate. The results showed that the maximum removal of TOC and SS could be reached at the optimal of HRT and loading rate. The removal of TOC was more sensitive to variations in the HRT than to variations in the loading rate; however, the effect of loading rate was dominant in the removal of SS compared to the effect of the HRT. The pH remained relatively constant during the aeration stage. The dissolved oxygen concentration changed as aeration proceeded. This may be related to TOC degradation and microbial activity. A lower sludge production rate was observed in the aerobic suspended-growth SBRs. [Scientific formulae used in this abstract could not be reproduced.]

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