Simultaneous removal of organic material, nitrogen and phosphorus in a reactor in batches of mobile bed biofilm sequencing by the anaerobic-anoxic-oxic process

ABSTRACT In this study, the performance of a reactor in sequential batch with mobile bed biofilm operated by the anaerobic-anoxic-oxic (A2O) process, applied to the simultaneous removal of organic material, nitrogen and phosphorus from sanitary sewage was evaluated. Two reactors with a useful volume of 36 liters each were used, one of them receiving Kaldnes® type mobile plastic rings, with a specific surface area estimated at 310 m2/m3, which occupied 50% of the reactor’s useful volume (MBSBBR). The study was conducted with 12-day solid retention time (SRT), 6 hour hydraulic retention time (HRT), food/microorganism (F/M) ratio of 0.4 to 0.5 gCOD/VSS.d, dissolved oxygen (DO) in the range of 0.3-0.8 mgO2/L and application rates of organic load, nitrogen and phosphorus of 47.2 gCOD/L.d, 5.4 gTNK/L.d and 0.4 gP/L.d, respectively. The efficiency of chemical oxygen demand (COD), N-NH3 and Phosphorus removal was of 91.1%, 90.5% and 85.4% for the MBSBBR reactor and 89.5%, 91.6% and 84.4% for the RBS reactor, respectively. The results of the statistical ANOVA test were applied to the main variables studied and the values converged to values of f observed