Approximate expressions of a SBR for wastewater treatment: Comparison with numeric solutions and application to predict the biomassconcentration in real cases

LOBO, CINTIA; BERTOLA N.; CONTRERAS E.M.

PROCESS SAFETY AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION

INST CHEMICAL ENGINEERS

Año: 2016 vol. 100 p. 65 - 73

0957-5820

tMost industrial wastewater treatment systems often operate under transient conditions,causing several operational problems. An effective solution is the use of Sequencing BatchReactors (SBR). In general, a great number of simulations are necessary to solve SBRsmathematical models in order to evaluate the effect of the operational conditions on the per-formance of the reactor. In this work, a set of analytical equations that represent the effect ofthe operational parameters on the performance of a SBR was developed. The obtained equa-tions adequately represent the change of the organic substrate, ammonia, biomass, oxygenand soluble microbial products as a function of time within a single operation cycle of theSBR. The equations also predict the steady-state concentrations as a function of severaloperational parameters, avoiding the problem of performing a great number of simulations.Based on real SBR data, the biomass growth yield and the decay factor for two syntheticwastewaters were obtained. Using these coefficients, the proposed equations adequatelypredicted the biomass concentration in real cases.