Fluidized bed reactor (FBR) is an attached growth
the system used mainly for biological treatment of industrial
wastewater of high organic content. These wastewaters are
usually resulted from refineries and milk, starch, and olive oil
industries. The objective of this study is to investigate the use of
fluidized bed reactor for treating sanitary sewage. The study was
accomplished using a pilot plant of the FBR. The pilot plant was
constructed and installed in Hamdan Sewage Treatment Plant in
Basrah governorate. That was to maintain continuous source of
settled sewage which is the influent to the FBR. The period of
plant operation was nine weeks. During, this period, the plant
was operated at three phases of different conditions (up the flow
velocity and recirculation ratio). To study the performance of
FBR, the main measured parameters were; BOD, DO, VSS, pH,
and temperature. The most important conclusions of this study
are; (1) the maximum efficiency of BOD removal is 78.6% which
was obtained for hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 24min and
upflow velocity of 1.59m/min, (2) the effluent BOD values during
phases-1 and 2 of plant operation match that of stabilization
ponds and trickling filters and during phase-3 matches that
activated sludge process, (3) during all operation phases, the
values of effluent pH are within the limits specified in national
standards of secondary effluents, (4) as F/M increases, the
efficiency of BOD removal decreases and the maximum
the efficiency of BOD removal (78.6%) was obtained at F/M ratio
equals 23.47 day-1, and (5) the HRT of fluidized bed reactor is on
order of minutes, while, the values of HRT of activated sludge
systems and stabilization ponds are on the order of hours and days,
respectively |