Study on Performance of a Modified Anaerobic Baffled Reactor (ABR) to Treat 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 decrease solids retention. In this study a modified ABR with a working volume of 50 liters was designed to determine the treatment efficiency and methane production rate of high strength wastewater at different hydraulic retention time (HRT) and organic loading rate (OLR). A mixture of 62% kitchen waste and 38% sewage sludge was used as substrate. Initially the characteristics of kitchen waste were measured. Next the effects of different HRT and OLR were evaluated in the reactor. Result shows that the highest COD removals (74.5% and 75.4%) were observed at 3 days HRT and OLR of 2 kg/m3d, respectively. While the best production of biogas (7.40 and 9.10 L/d) was observed at 5 days HRT and OLR of 6 kg/m3d respectively.