Biological treatment of hypersaline wastewater from table olive processing: Process performance and protist population under different operating conditions

[EN] Biological treatment of fermentation brines from table olive processing (FTOP) entails many difficulties due to their very high salinity and high COD concentration, which include some phenolic compounds. These extreme conditions limit the biodiversity of the microbial population. Experiments treating FTOP were performed in laboratory sequencing batch reactors (SBR) changing operating conditions during their operation, in order to study the effects on the SBR performance and on the protist population. The statistical study showed that the SBRs with high influent COD, pH and volatile solids and low influent phenol concentration, hydraulic retention time and temperature achieved the highest COD removal efficiencies. These operational conditions also provided the highest ciliate population and the lowest flagellate presence. (C) 2017 The Korean Society of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. The authors of this work thank the financial support of CDTI (Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnologico Industrial) depending on the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. We also gratefully acknowledge Pedro Cuesta (Apoyo a la Docencia y la Investigacion. UCM) for his suggestions and help with the statistical analysis and the use of SPAD v8.0 software. Ferrer-Polonio, E.; Pérez Uz, B.; Mendoza Roca, JA.; Iborra Clar, A.; Pastor Alcañiz, L. (2017). Biological treatment of hypersaline wastewater from table olive processing: Process performance and protist population under different operating conditions. Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry. 56:364-374. doi:10.1016/j.jiec.2017.07.033