Combined treatment of real sugar industry and sago wastewater using hybrid upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (HUASB) reactor

This paper presents the performance of Hybrid Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (HUASB) reactor in treating combined real sugar industry and synthetic sago effluents. Sugar industry is one of the most important agricultural industries which discharge the effluent in a huge quantity that creates environmental problems. The disposal of untreated sugar industry effluent in soils and water bodies has received much attention since decades ago. So, in this study, it was decided to inoculate the HUASB reactor with seed sludge from the existing anaerobic digester treating sago wastewater and then it was started by using synthetic sago wastewater, and then it was fed with the combined real sugar industry and synthetic sago wastewater. The reactor was fed with the combined effluents of a real sugar industry and synthetic sago wastewater at different mixing ratios having the Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) ranging from 4450 to 5360 mg/L with HRT of 24 hours. The pH, COD removal, volatile fatty acid (VFA), alkalinity and biogas production were monitored for various inlet of COD values. The inlet and outlet pH was between the range of 5.62 to 7.36 and 7.53 to 8.18 respectively. The VFA and alkalinity varied from 36 to 84 mg/L and 926 to 998 mg/L respectively. The biogas production varied from 10.6 to 13.2 L/d. The maximum COD removal of 94.4% and the biogas production of 13.2 L/d was reported at pH 8.11 at the mixing ratio of 60/40 (sago/sugar industry wastewater). © 2020 Technoscience Publications. All rights reserved.