Applications of Anaerobic Baffled Reactor in Wastewater Treatment Using Agriculture Wastes

Abstract

Egypt and some developing countries are facing a shortage of water needs, so it is necessary to develop low cost technology to suit these countries and optimize the use of surrounding water. Achieving high efficiencies in anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR) for reducing chemical oxygen demand (COD) has always been an outstanding challenge for most researchers as most experiments focus on using fibers in ABR to reduce COD. In this paper a new material was introduced as a replacement for fibers which is the agricultural waste such as palm fibers and ficus trees. The Effect of using agricultural wastes on the performance of the (ABR) in reducing COD was tested for four different stages (start-up, steady state, shock and final). Both palm fibers and ficus trees samples achieved higher COD removal efficiency as compared to previous studies. The palm fiber samples achieved the highest COD removal efficiency in the four stages as compared to the ficus tree samples.