A Comparison of Swine Wastewater Treatment Using Real-Time and Fixed-Time Two-Stage Sequencing Batch Reactors

Abstract

This study compared the swine wastewater treatment of two identical lab-scale two-stage sequencing batch reactors (TSSBR) under similar conditions except that one was operated on a fixed-time mode and the other on a real-time mode. While both TSSBR systems performed very well, the real-time TSSBR performed far better then the fixed-time TSSBR, in every aspect of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous removal. The removals of COD, TOC, were at 97% and for BOD₅ even at 99.7%. In terms of NH₄-N and TKN removals, the real-time TSSBR achieved removal of over 98%. For phosphorus removals (Ortho-P and total P) the results from the real-time TSSBR was quite remarkable at 97.7%.

Keywords:

• Swine waste treatment
• Two-stage SBR
• Fixed-time and real-time

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the research funding provided by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Canada.