The Inverse Fluidization - A New Approach to Biofilm Reactor Design, to Aerobic Wastewater Treatment

Abstract

This chapter describes a new approach to biofilm reactor design and to aerobic wastewater treatment. The substantial advantages of fluidized systems, such as effective mixing, and intensive mass and heat transfer are the main reasons for the unabated interest in fluidization from specialists in different fields during the past 3–4 decades. Among the various different modes of fluidization, the most spread ones are the well known up flow systems consisting of gas–solid, liquid–solid or gas–liquid–solid phases. In these systems, a bed of solid particles is suspended in a fluid media due to the net drag force of the fluids flowing opposite to the net gravitational force on the particles. The main achievements of biofluidization are linked with the development of upflow bioprocess systems with spontaneously fixed biomass on solid particles or in other words with biofilm fluidized bed reactors. The experiments with laboratory, pilot and full-scale inverse fluidized bed biofilm reactors, and the simulation by means of the mathematical model of the bioreactor, showed that the use of inverse fluidization in bioprocess systems development is very promising.