Abstract

This study was conducted to develop a novel combined system of a hybrid rotating biological contactor (RBC) process that was composed of an attached- and suspended- biomass reactor, followed by a settler and a biological aerated filter (BAF) column to treat a high strength slaughter wastewater. Long term influences of organic and nitrogen loading rates were investigated to see how the combined system worked in terms of the removal efficiency. A synthetic wastewater containing a pork cutlet steak source (commercially available) and swine blood was used to feed the combined system. The hybrid RBC process showed excellent removals: about 95% for soluble COD and 85% for ammonium nitrogen. However, the unsettled solids seriously deteriorated the removal efficiency of total COD (TCOD) and total nitrogen (TN) in the RBC process. A significant fraction of the TCOD and suspended solids (SS) was further removed in the BAF column although the effluent quality was still unsatisfactory, giving TCOD 300 mg/L, SS 180 mg/L and TN 59 mg/L. An addition of polyaluminium chloride into the RBC effluent improved the performance of the settler and BAF, producing an excellent quality of final effluent; TCOD 16.5 mg/L, SS 0 mg/L, TN 55.5 mg/L, TP 1.3 mg/L. Therefore, it was confirmed that the combined system of hybrid RBC and BAF could treat a high strength slaughter wastewater excellently.

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