Enhancing Sustainability in Wine Production: Evaluating Winery Wastewater Treatment Using Sequencing Batch Reactors

Abstract

Wine production generates a high volume of wastewater with a significant fraction of biodegradable organic matter that must be removed before safe release into surface waters. Aerobic sequencing batch reactors (SBRs) have been successfully applied in the treatment of a wide range of wastewaters. However, only a few studies have described the use of the SBR process for the treatment of winery wastewater (WW). The effectiveness of using an aerobic SBR process was investigated for the treatment of WW using two activated sludge concentrations (i.e., 2 and 4 gVSS L−1) and nutrient-supplemented conditions. In nutrient-deficient conditions, COD removal efficiencies varied between 70% and 97% depending on the organic loading rate (OLR). In nutrient-supplemented assays, COD removal efficiencies remained above 91% in all conditions tested. However, the effluent quality decreased due to the increase in the total suspended solids concentration. Furthermore, the COD concentration of the treated effluent was unable to meet legal requirements (−1) for safe wastewater discharge. Therefore, longer aeration periods and settling phases may be required in order to improve effluent quality under high organic loadings. Overall, these findings demonstrate the potential of SBR as a biological WW treatment process.

Keywords

• biological treatment
• aerobic process
• organic loading rate
• agro-industrial effluents