Asghar Ebrahimi, Hassan Hashemi, Mohammadmehdi Amin, Bijan Bina, Afshin Ebrahimi Hamidreza Pourzamani, Yaghoub Hajizadeh and Afsaneh Hosseini
Abstract
This study was investigated to determine biological treatability of composting leachate and the amount of biogas produced in different organic loading rates (OLRs) by anaerobic migrating blanket reactor (AMBR). The composting leachate was fed continuously to a plexiglass AMBR reactor. Reactor was seeded with granulated sludge from anaerobic digester and operated at mesophilic phase. Samples were collected and analyses based on standard methods for selected indicator such as COD, CODs rbCOD, BOD5, VFAs, Biogas and CH4 content and etc. The OLRs applied to the system was gradually increased from 1 to 19.65 g COD/ l.d in 11 runs during the 280 day. The optimum performance of reactor was observed with an organic loading rate of 3.79 g COD/L. d. The maximum removal efficiency of COD, SCOD, rbCOD and BOD5 were up to 82.8, 87.42, 96.4 and 90.6 percent. The influent and effluent of BOD5/COD ratio was ranged from 0.47 - 0.69 and 0.28-0.38. Effluent concentration of TSS, VSS and TDS were 660-7452, 346.5-4597 and 1750-30170 mg/L. Biogas and Standard methane production rate (SMPR) were achieved to 6.65 and 3.99 l/L. day at an OLR 19.65 gCOD/L.d. The effluent of VFAs concentrations was in the range of 0.02-0.49 g/L. Finally, this process has potential to treat composting leachate as a pretreatment and changing its into useable products such as biogas.