Modelling of Two-Stage Anaerobic Treating Wastewater from a Molasses-Based Ethanol Distillery with the IWA Anaerobic Digestion Model No.1

Abstract

This paper presents the application of ADM1 model to simulate the dynamic behaviour of a two-stage anaerobic treatment process treating the wastewater generated from the ethanol distillery process. The laboratory-scale process comprised an anaerobic continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) and an upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) connecting in series, was used to treat wastewater from the ethanol distillery process. The CSTR and UASB hydraulic retention times (HRT) were 12 and 70 hours, respectively. The model was developed based on ADM1 basic structure and implemented with the simulation software AQUASIM. The simulated results were compared with measured data obtained from using the laboratory-scale two-stage anaerobic treatment process to treat wastewater. The sensitivity analysis identified maximum specific uptake rate (km) and half-saturation constant (Ks) of acetate degrader and sulfate reducing bacteria as the kinetic parameters which highly affected the process behaviour, which were further estimated. The study concluded that the model could predict the dynamic behaviour of a two-stage anaerobic treatment process treating the ethanol distillery process wastewater with varying strength of influents with reasonable accuracy.