Treatment of methanol wastewater in external circulation anaerobic reactor with different inoculums

In order to guide the inoculums selection for the anaerobic treatment of methanol wastewater in the engineering application,two 7 L bench-scale external circulation (EC) anaerobic reactors were operated to investigate the inoculums of anaerobic granular sludge and anaerobic digested sludge,focusing on the efficiency and process stability.The effect of impact concentration and temperature on the performance was studied.The results demonstrated that anaerobic granular sludge as the inoculums could complete the start-up more rapidly than the anaerobic digested sludge,and above 90% COD removal were achieved at the organic loading rate of 10 to 15 kgCOD/(m3·d).The effect of impact COD on the methanogenic activity of sludge was weak and the removal efficiencies recovered gradually in the two reactors.The COD removal efficiencies reduced swiftly to 50%-60% due to the impact temperature.The results indicated that the complex bacterial groups in anaerobic digested sludge benefited to enhance the reactor’s capacity for withstanding the temperature shock at some extent.