ANAEROBIC TREATMENT OF DESIZING EFFLUENT IN A MESOPHILIC ANAEROBIC PACKED BED REACTOR

Abstract

Textile manufacturing releases large amount of wastewater with significant load of organic pollution mainly in form of desizing agent and dyes. The textile effluent is amenable to biological treatment and can negatively impact receiving water bodies if proper treatment is not performed before discharging the same in natural water bodies. The untreated wastewater takes its toll on dissolved oxygen and the ecosystem is put to stress. This can have serious and permanent adverse effects on flora and fauna of the ecosystem. Additionally impairment of water quality will render it harmful to other water users. Hence treatment of waste water is of paramount importance to save the nature and the right of other users. Of late anaerobic treatment has become a competitive method to traditional aerobic process as it is less energy intensive, produces smaller amount sludge and terminal product of anaerobic treatment is rich in methane which has potential fuel value. This study focused on examination of biodegradability of textile effluent in an anaerobic biofilm reactor. The reactor was operated in batch mode with complete recycling. The kinetics of waste degradation was described by implementing Anaerobic Digestion model No. 1 (ADM1) through mole based stoichiometric equations to safeguard against mass leakages reported elsewhere about the model. The pH of the solution was computed through an algebraic charge balance equation. The reactor hydraulics was modeled as a completely mixed reactor. The resulting set of ordinary differential equations was solved using implicit Euler method including a positivity preserving step. The model predictions were compared against the experimental results collected.