Anaerobic membrane bioreactors enable high rate treatment of slaughterhouse wastewater

Abstract

membrane bioreactors enable high rate treatment of slaughterhouse wastewater, Biochemical Engineering Journal http://dx. Highlights-AnMBRs are an effective technology for treatment of slaughterhouse wastewater -COD removal was consistently over 95% and was independent of OLR and HRT -Organic loading limit of 3-3.5 gCOD.L -1 d -1 was imposed by active biomass inventory -Biomass inventory in the AnMBR was limited to 40 g.L -1 (TS) to manage fouling ABSTRACT Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactors (AnMBRs) enable high space loading by retaining solids selectively through microfiltration membranes. For organic industrial wastewaters, this offers an alternative to lagoons and granule based high-rate anaerobic treatment due to excellent effluent quality, high tolerance to load variations, and ability to produce a solids free effluent for the purposes of reuse. While there has been extensive work on low-strength and low solids effluent, there has been limited application in high-solids, high fats systems such as slaughterhouse wastewater, which are a key application. A 200L AnMBR pilot plant operated at 2 Australian cattle slaughterhouses consistently removed over 95% of chemical oxygen demand (COD) from the wastewater. Virtually all degradable COD was converted to biogas, 78-90% of nitrogen and 74% of phosphorus in the wastewater were released to the treated permeate as ammonia and phosphate respectively; which would enable subsequent nutrient capture. The mass loading rate limit of 3-3.5 gCOD.L -1 d -1 is imposed by the active biomass inventory, with this in turn limited to 40 g.L -1 (TS) by the need to manage membrane fouling control.

Anaerobic membrane bioreactors—a mini review with emphasis on industrial wastewater treatment: applications, limitations and perspectives

“…Most recently, laboratoryand pilot-scale AnMBR plants have been used to treat different food processing wastewater, e.g. from slaughterhouses [31], molasses production [32], dairy manure [29], pharmaceutical production [33] and landfill leachate [26]. While a number of full-scale aerobic MBR studies have been conducted on municipal or industrial wastewaters [23,[84][85][86], there has only been one study to date reporting on a full-scale AnMBR installation for industrial wastewater treatment ( [35]; Table 2).…”

“…Dereli et al [6], Ismail et al [88] and Lefebvre and Moletta [89] have all reported high salt concentrations as one of the most serious limiting factors for anaerobic systems due to their inhibitory/toxic effects on non-adapted biomass. Following biomass adaptation, however, AnMBRs are capable of achieving very high COD removal efficiencies when fed with otherwise poorly biodegradable wastewater [31,55,90].…”

“…As a result, the majority of current studies have been carried out under mesophilic temperatures, e.g. [26,31,32]. Thermophilic temperatures have been applied very rarely (Table 2), with just Qiao et al used such temperature for the treatment of food industry wastewater [36].…”

Slaughterhouse Wastewater: Treatment, Management and Resource Recovery

“…Anaerobic treatment is the preferred biological treatment because of its effectiveness in treating high-strength wastewater such as SWW with less complex equipment requirements [8]. Although anaerobic treatment is efficient, anaerobically treated effluents require posttreatment to comply with required discharge limits where the complete stabilization of the organic matter is not possible by anaerobic treatment alone.…”

Hazardous Waste Treatment Technologies

“…Changes observed in bacterial and archaeal richness did not match with the functioning of the system. However, dynamics and evenness parameters seemed to be of importance in maintaining a stable reactor performance Jensen et al (2015). used an anaerobic membrane bioreactors (AnMBR) for the removal of over 95% of the COD from the wastewater generated by cattle slaughterhouses.…”