An Application of Modified Anaerobic Baffled Reactor (ABR) to Treatment of High Strength Wastewater

The main problems associated with the treatment of high strength materials in an Anaerobic Baffled Reactor (ABR) are the inability to produce a floating sludge layer, which would enhance solids retention and the high velocities associated with the baffles caused significant washout of solid materials. Therefore, in this study a modified ABR with working volume of 50 liters were designed to study the treatment efficiency of high strength wastewater. The mixture of 75% kitchen waste and 25% sewage sludge was used as substrate. Initially the characteristics of kitchen waste were measured. Next the effects of different hydraulic retention time (HRT) and organic loading rate (OLR) were evaluated in the reactor. Result shows that the highest COD removal (74.5% and 75.4%) happened at 3 days HRT and 2 kg/m^3d of OLR, respectively. While the best production of biogas (7.40 and 9.10 L/d) was observed at 5 days HRT and 6 kg/m^3d of OLR in order. Overall performance of modified ABR system has showed proper ability of the system in COD removal or biogas production.