Treatment of Iraqi municipal wastewater by up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket reactor UASB

In this work, the Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket “UASB” reactor treated effluent wastewater to investigate the process performance on a pilot plant scale. Municipal wastewater at high and medium strength with different organic load rate OLR (0.6-9) kg COD m-3 day-1 with the flow of 20 l/h, up-flow velocity 0.4 m/h, hydraulic retention time HRT 9 h at a temperature of (20-30 ºC) was evaluated. The wastewater concentration, including TSS, COD was measured, and the removal efficiencies of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total suspended solid TSS were calculated and summarized as 45-85% and 70-75%, respectively, depending on organic load rate OLR. Effluent volatile fatty acids VFA was measured, and the results were in the range between 12-90 mg/L depending on OLR with a slight change in pH (8.3-8.4), which means the conversion of COD to methane and increase ammonia concentration.