Study of hydrodynamic behavior of a laboratory scale upflow anaerobic fixed film fixed bed reactor.

ABSTRACT

Application of anaerobic fixed film fixed bed reactor (AFFFB), containing mixed population of bacteria, helps in bacterial immobilization as biofilm on a support medium in the reactor overcoming the problem of biomass washout. Knowledge of hydrodynamics characteristics helps in better understanding and evaluating the performance of any reactor. This paper presents residence time distribution (RTD) studies carried out to investigate the hydrodynamic behavior of AFFFB reactor under the influence of varied hydraulic loading resulting in HRTs in range 24 hrs to 6 hrs. Results have demonstrated that the flow pattern is more close to a plug flow type and vary with varying intensity of dispersion and the extent of dispersion increases with decrease in HRTs.