Treatment of textile wastewater with an anaerobic fluidized bed reactor Original Research Article

The discharge of textile wastewater containing dyes in the environment is worrying for both toxicological and esthetical reasons as dyes impede light penetration, damage the quality of the receiving streams and are toxic to food chain organisms. A fluidized bed reactor (FBR) with activated carbon as support material has been used to investigate the removal efficiency of chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and color of textile wastewater. The FBR was fed continuously without supplemented (Phase 1 and 2) and supplemented with glucose (Phase 3–5) at hydraulic retention times (HRT) of 4 h, and increased to 8 and 12 h with flow rates of 36, 18,12 L/d, respectively. The HRT was operated for a duration of 14 days. The effect of operational conditions such as organic loading rate (OLR), (HRT), and influence of glucose concentration as substrate additives was investigated to achieve the maximum removal efficiency in the reactor. Results indicated that anaerobic treatment of textile wastewater was possible with the supplementation of substrate additives as external carbon sources such as glucose (about 0.6 g/l). A further increase in the external carbon source added to textile wastewater did not improve the color removal efficiency of the anaerobic FBR reactor. The study implied that 98% soluble COD, 95% BOD5, and 65% color reduction were possible by an anaerobic FBR.