The Buoyant Filter Bioreactor: a high-rate anaerobic reactor for complex wastewater - process dynamics with dairy effluent

A novel high-rate anaerobic reactor, called Buoyant Filter Bioreactor (BFBR), has been developed for treating lipid-rich complex wastewater. The BFBR is able to decouple the biomass and insoluble COD retention time from the hydraulic retention time by means of a granular filter bed made of buoyant polystyrene beads. Filter clogging is prevented by an automatic backwash driven by biogas release, which fluidizes the granular filter bed in a downward direction. During filter backwash, the solids captured in the filter are reintroduced into the reaction zone of the reactor. The reaction zone is provided with a mixing system, which is independent of the hydraulic retention time. The performance of a laboratory-scale BFBR was studied for the treatment of dairy effluent, chosen as a model complex wastewater. The dairy effluent was not pre-treated for fat removal. The BFBR was operated over 400 d and showed greater than 85% COD removal at 10 kg COD/(m(3)/d). The COD conversion to methane in the BFBR was essentially complete. The BFBR performance improved with age, and with feed containing 3200 mg COD/l, the treated effluent had 120 mg COD/l and no turbidity. The hold-up of degradable biosolids, including scum, inside the BFBR was estimated using starvation tests. When load is increased, scum accumulates inside the BFBR and then decays after undergoing change from hydrophobic to hydrophilic. This is explained as the accumulation of fat solids, its conversion to insoluble long chain fatty acids and its further solubilization and degradation. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.