Affiliations: Dept. of Marine Sciences, Bharatidasan University
Tiruchy-620018, Tamil Nadu, India | Indian Leather Industry Foundation (ILIFO) Periamet,
Chennai-600 003 | Centre for Environmental Studies Anna University,
Chennai-600 025
Abstract: The performance of combined anaerobic and aerobic treatment system
with different filter medias and their efficiencies were examined for domestic
wastewater. The gravitational flow rate to the system includes Anaerobic
Baffled Reactor (ABR), Anaerobic Filter (AnF) and Aerobic Filter (AF) and was
kept constantly giving hydraulic retention time of 7.6 h, 7.2 h and 11.4 h
respectively. The consecutive treatment efficiencies achieved were 43%, 79% and
94% on ABR, AnF and AF during the observation period. In anaerobic filter,
gravel media show higher efficiency than slag media and PO 4 removal is proven
to fail in the slag media. Gravel (2–4 mm) and pebble (8–10 mm)
gives better performance than sand media (0.5 mm) in aerobic filter. Gravel
(2–4 mm) with reed show higher efficiency (94%) than all other medias.
Combination of these three-system gives excellent alternative (89 to 94.5%
efficiency) to conventional treatment system, which proves and reduces the
operational cost.
Keywords: Wastewater, anaerobic baffled reactor, anaerobic filter, reed bed
