Operating Conditions and Kinetics of Wastewater Treatment in a Three-Phase Biological Fluidized Bed Reactor

Abstract

Systematic experiments were carried out with synthetic wastewater in order to investigate the operating conditions and kinetics of wastewater treatment in a three-phase biological fluidized bed reactor. It is found that with the COD loading rate changed stepwise from 3.5 to 11.2 kg COD/m3•d, the reactor can rapidly restore from each impact of COD load and maintain the removal rate for COD at 85% or above, presenting a high flexibility for the variation of organic loading rate (OLR) in the influent. While the operating OLR keeps constant, the increase of influent COD and NH3-N concentrations will be followed by the correspondingly increased removal rates, so that the COD and NH3-N concentrations in the effluent keep nearly constant. The batched experiments under different air supply conditions show that there exists an optimal air flow rate at which the most effective treatment can be achieved. Finally, a kinetics model of the continuous treatment process was derived based on mass balance and Monod equations, and the kinetic constants were determined by the experimental data at steady operating OLR.