Journal of Water Reuse and Desalination (Dec 2018)
Comparison of three types of anaerobic granular sludge for treating pharmaceutical wastewater
Abstract
Three types of anaerobic granular sludge for treating chemical synthesis-based pharmaceutical wastewater were compared: (1) an up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) filled with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) gel beads (UASB-PVA); (2) a UASB filled with traditional anaerobic granular sludge; and (3) a UASB filled with traditional anaerobic granular sludge and granular active carbon (UASB-GAC). The domestication times for the UASB-PVA, UASB, and UASB-GAC reactors were 30, 47, and 47 days, respectively. When the organic loading rate (OLR) was up to 7 kg chemical oxygen demand (COD)/(m3·d), the COD efficiency of the UASB-PVA, UASB, and UASB-GAC stayed in the range of 69% to 75% (deviation 1.8%), 46% to 69% (deviation 8.6%), and 61% to 73% (deviation 4.0%), respectively. The highest OLRs reached for the UASB-PVA, UASB, and UASB-GAC were 12, 7, and 8 kg COD/(m3·d), respectively. The performance of the UASB-PVA was the best of the three, the UASB-GAC was second, and the UASB was the worst. High-throughput pyrosequencing analysis showed that Levilinea, Syntrophorhabdus, Desulfovibrio and Acetobacterium were the dominant bacteria in the UASB-PVA, UASB, and UASB-GAC reactors’ granular sludge. The abundance and diversity of the microbial community in the UASB-PVA sludge were higher than for the UASB and UASB-GAC granular sludge.
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