Operating strategies have been developed for biological Sequencing Batch Reactor (SBR) treatment of both municipal wastes (i.e., low-strength wastes and industrial wastes (i.e., high-strength wastes containing difficult to degrade organics). SBR systems should also offer advantages for biological treatment of mixed municipal and industrial wastewaters that are relatively low strength but contain inorganics and hard to degrade hazardous organics. Engineering reactor to accomplish biological treatment of such wastewaters is important and is the focus of the proposed studies. Low-strength wastewater treatment typically requires maintaining small quantities of sludge in the reactor to facilitate removal of treated effluent, and to hold hydraulic retention times lo (i.e., small reactor size). However, when biological treatment of hard-to-degrade and toxic organics is attempted, quantities of sludge held in the reactor must be large enough to maintain sufficient numbers of organisms acclimate to biological degradation of those organics. The egg-shaped reactor, which ha been widely used in Germany and recently introduced in the United States for anaerobic sludge digestion, appears to be well suited for biological SBR treatment of these mixed wastewaters. The proposed studies are directed at the process development and engineering design of an egg-shaped SBR system for treatment of mixed municipal and industrial wastewaters.
