Abstract
With a greater push to achieve waste management and renewable energy targets technologies such as anaerobic digestion (AD) have increased in popularity. One such technology option is the Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) reactor, these have been shown to be a particularly robust option for high strength organic wastewaters, such as those generated by the malted ingredient manufacturing industry. Despite their effectiveness they are reported to have lengthy and complex start ups due to the range of physiochemical and biological interactions influencing sludge blanket stability. This process can be sped up by seeding the plant from sludge from similar plants, however this is not always possible. This paper aims to investigate the start up of a full-scale mesophilic UASB treating malted ingredient wastewater that was initially seeded with a granular sludge treating dairy wastewater. Operational performance during the first 75 days of start up was comparable to that of a fully established plant with a COD removal efficiency in excess of 81.89% and a biogas methane concentration greater than 57.24%. During this period the plant remained operationally robust with the Organic Loading Rates (OLR) exuding the greatest influence on plant performance. Similar to operations during stable conditions key operational parameters such as HRT times, temperatures and pH did not exert a strong influence on the plant.
Highlights
Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a technology that has gained popularity in recent years for its effective treatment of organic waste streams (ADBA, 2016)
This paper aims to investigate the start up of a full-scale mesophilic Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) treating malted ingredient wastewater that was initially seeded with a granular sludge treating dairy wastewater
Influent Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) concentration ranged from 15,619mg/L to 44,684 mg/L with an associated mean of 26,837mg/L (STD±6,124); organic nitrogen levels ranged from 132mg/L to 561mg/L and phosphorus from 3.58mg/L to 180mg/L This results in a mean CNP ratio of roughly 250:3:1 during the start up period
Summary
Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a technology that has gained popularity in recent years for its effective treatment of organic waste streams (ADBA, 2016) It holds significant benefits over aerobic treatment due to its low construction costs, low operational footprint, low sludge production, and green energy production through the production of biogas (Singh et al, 2013). The length of this start up procedure is governed by a number of complex and interrelated factors which influence the development of the sludge blanket such as wastewater characterisation, the sludge used to seed the plant, pH, nutrient ratio, inhibitory compounds, hydraulic and organic loading rates, up flow velocity, mixing effectiveness and reactor design (Zhang et al, 2012)
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