Treatment of thin stillage in a high-rate anaerobic fluidized bed bioreactor (AFBR)

The primary objective of this work was to investigate the treatability of thin stillage as a by-product of bioethanol production plants using an anaerobic fluidized bed bioreactor (AFBR) employing zeolite with average diameter of (d(m)) of 425-610 mu m and specific surface area (SSA) of 26.5 m(2)/g as the carrier media. Despite the very high strength of thin stillage with chemical oxygen demand of 130,000 mg TCOD/L and suspended solids of 47,000 mg TSS/L, the AFBR showed up to 88% TCOD and 78% TSS removal at very high organic and solids loading rates (OLR and SLR) of 29 kg COD/m(3) d and 10.5 kg TSS/m(3) d respectively and hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 3.5 days. Methane production rates of up to 160 L/d at the steady state equivalent to 40 L-CH4/L-thin stillge d and biogas production rate per reactor volume of 15.8 L-gas/L-reactor d were achieved. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.