PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF DIPHASIC FIXED BED FIXED FILM ANAEROBIC REACTOR FOR TREATING DAIRY EFFLUENT

In any dairy plant, the quantity and characteristics of effluent is depending upon the extent of production activities, from chilling to pasteurization and to several milk products. The application of anaerobic digesters in the first phase of treatment, which is followed by high rate aerobic treatment, remains as the most common effluent treatment scheme for dairy plants. The two phased digester plants viz . Acetogenic and Methanogenic digesters with microbial support media is the recent trend for optimized COD removal for 70-75%. The present study evaluated a laboratory model having a Diphasic digester (38 liters of effective volume) for treating dairy effluent. The model was run for different combinations of synthetic influent COD, mg/L (8000, 8996, 9956, 10976 and 11981) and Flow rate, m3/day (0.006, 0.012, 0.024, 0.036 and 0.048) . The maximum % COD removal efficiency was observed at 71.5 % for a VLR of 14.5 Kg COD/m3 day The kinetic parameters are estimated using the experimental data and a linear regression model is proposed to simulate the performance of the of a hybrid, Diphasic digester.