Effect of micro aeration on anaerobic treatment of sulphate and ammonia rich wastewater

Abstract

Microaeration is a stratergy applied during anaerobic conversion to improve treatment efficicency. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of microaeration on a combined effect of sulphate and ammonia present in latex wastewater. Wastewater obtained from skim latex processing plant contains high ammonia content apart from high sulphate oncentration. the latex wastewater was treated anaerobically in two sequential anaerobic reactors with two treatment steps and the reactors were semi continuously fed with hydraulic retention time(hrt) of 14 days. After 7 weeks of operation first reactor was microaerated using an oxygen permeable polymeric membrane. during micro aeration of latex wastewater sulphate and ammonia removed by sulphur reducing ammonium oxidation(srao) mechanism. Micraeration result in cod recduction enhancement by 24% in during first treatment step.