Chavalit Ratanatamskul
Chulalongkorn University, Thailand
Title: Converting of rubber-latex processing wastewater to biogas production using the Anaerobic Baffled Reactor (ABR)
Biography
Biography: Chavalit Ratanatamskul
Abstract
Rubber-latex processing industry is recognized to cause significant environmental problems and can pose public health risk, leading to water pollution and consequently affects global environmental eco-system. Rubber-latex processing wastewater containing high organic and sulphate was studied in order to know the feasibility of organic and sulfate removal using anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR) system. The ABR configuration was adjusted with different compartment of baffles (3, 5, 7 baffles). The ABR system was operated at the same HRT 5 days with varying organic loading rate to 1, 2 and 3 kgCOD/m3-day. It was found that high efficiency of sulfate reduction of more than 98%, suspended solid removal efficiency nearly 90% could be achieved with all ABR configurations with different organic loading rates from 1 to 3 kgCOD/m3-day and baffle number of 3, 5 and 7. However, COD conversion performance is declined significantly to approximately 78% when increasing OLR up to 3 kgCOD/m3-day. An increase in number of baffles resulted in a slight improvement of system performance in terms of COD and suspended solid removal. This was due to the fact that more biomass could be maintained inside the ABR system with more baffle plates. Furthermore, methane contents in biogas produced from the ABR systems at OLR 2-3 kgCOD/m3-day with 5 and 7 baffles were found higher than 60%, which is in suitable range for biogas utilization.
