Anaerobic digestion of dairy wastewater by inverse fluidization: The inverse fluidized bed and the inverse turbulent bed reactors

Abstract

This paper describes the application of the inverse fluidization technology to the anaerobic digestion of dairy wastewater. Two reactors were investigated: the inverse fluidized bed reactor and the inverse turbulent reactor. In these reactors, a granular floating solid is expanded by a down‐flow current of effluent or an up‐flow current of gas, respectively. The carrier particles (Extendospheres^(™)) were chosen for their large specific surface area (20,000 m²m⁻³) and their low energy requirements for fluidization (gas velocity of 1.5 mm s⁻¹, 5.4 m h⁻¹). Organic load was increased stepwise by reducing hydraulic retention time from more than 60 days to 3 days, while maintaining constant the feed COD concentration. Both reactors achieved more than 90% of COD removal, at an organic loading rate of 10–12 kg_COD m⁻³d⁻¹, respectively. The performances observed were similar or even higher than that of other previously tested fluidized bed technologies treating the same wastewater. It was found that the main advantages of this system are: low energy requirement, because of the low fluidization velocities required; there is no need of a settling device, because solids accumulate at the bottom of the reactor, so they can be easily drawn out and particles with high‐biomass content can be easily recovered. Lipid phosphate concentration has been revealed as a good method for biomass estimation in biofilms since it only includes living biomass.