Treatment of poultry slaughterhouse wastewater using integrated anaerobic-aerobic sequencing batch reactor

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Date
2018
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
Abstract
Poultry slaughterhouse industries produce relatively high quantity of wastewater. This effluent is classified as a high-strength wastewater causing environmental deterioration if it is discharged without proper treatment especially for organics, ammoniacal nitrogen (NH3-N), including fat, oil, and grease (FOG) contaminants. A review was carried out to determine the research gap and to gain more insight on treatment system using two regimes (anaerobic and aerobic) processes in sequence for high-rate bioreactors which act as one unit in an integrated manner with physical separation and utilizing merely suspended growth system. Thus, a new configuration bioreactor called integrated anaerobic-aerobic sequencing batch reactor (IAASBR) was proposed and investigated to achieve the aforementioned targets. This study comprises of four parts: the first part characterized the poultry slaughterhouse wastewater (PSW) generated in Malaysia by selection of three poultry slaughterhouses. The second part dealt with choosing the best volumetric anaerobic/aerobic ratio (Van/Va) for the proposed IAASBR that has achieved the best organics and NH3-N removal efficiencies. Subsequently, the third part investigated the IAASBR’s endurance for maximum organic loading rate (OLR). Lastly, the ability of the proposed configuration for the simultaneous biological total nitrogen (TN) and phosphate (PO43-) removal from PSW was investigated. The characteristics of PSWs displayed high fluctuation in their pollution levels between the three selected factories and within the same plant itself (for example total chemical oxygen demand (TCOD) concentration was in the range of 940-3400 mg/L with an average 1940 ± 680 mg/L). The average removal efficiency for the best ratio (Van/Va = 2) measured as the TCOD, soluble chemical oxygen demand (SCOD), NH3-N, FOG, and total suspended solids were 97% ± 2%, 95% ± 3%, 98% ± 1.3%, 90% ± 11%, and 96% ± 3% respectively. The laboratory comparison test revealed that IAASBR configuration has enhanced the sludge settleability for aerobic sequencing batch reactor (SBR) more than the conventional SBR by emerging a new phenomenon called “Water Inflation Phenomenon (WIPh)”. IAASBR could tolerate the shock loading occurrence and handle OLR up to 4.5 kg(TCOD)/m3 d, producing a high-quality effluent complying with the standards for industrial’s effluents. In the aspect of renewable energy, the anaerobic SBR produced a reasonable quantity of biogas 0.10-0.21 L/d Lr (26-28°C) with methane (CH4) composition of 69%. This configuration exhibited low overall removal efficiencies for TN and PO43- by 38% and 6%, respectively. Furthermore, the main features of this IAASBR configuration are elimination of the inhibitory effect for FOG constituent’s concentration up to 370 mg/L and high removal efficiencies of organics and NH3-N with less aeration exertion (economical aspect) in addition of biogas production. In conclusion, the proposed bioreactor configuration exhibits a high performance, steady, and flexibility under different operation conditions along the 17 months period of this research
Description
Thesis (PhD. (Civil Engineering))
Keywords
Sewage—Purification—Anaerobic treatment, Slaughtering and slaughter-houses, Bioreactors
Citation