Effect of pH on the Performance of Sulfate and Thiosulfate-Fed Sulfate Reducing Inverse Fluidized Bed Reactors
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 142, Issue 9
Abstract
Sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB)–based technologies have gained a lot of attention in the field of wastewater treatment, especially to treat metal-contaminated wastewaters. An inverse fluidized bed (IFB) bioreactor is a versatile bioreactor configuration that uses SRB technology for metal removal and recovery from wastewater. Apart from sulfate, which is commonly used as an electron acceptor, thiosulfate is another potential candidate for this process. In this study, the performance of two IFB bioreactors that were operated at pH 7.0 (R1) and 5.0 (R2) using sulfate and thiosulfate as the electron acceptors were evaluated. The electron donor used in this study was ethanol and the chemical oxygen demand (COD) to electron acceptor ratio ( or ) was kept constant at 1.0. By using sulfate as the electron acceptor, the average COD removal efficiency was 75.0 and 58.0% at pH 7.0 and 5.0, respectively, while the sulfate removal efficiency was 74.4 and 50.4%, respectively. The average sulfide production was 246.3 and at pH 7.0 and pH 5.0, respectively. Using thiosulfate as the electron acceptor, slightly higher sulfate reduction activities were achieved when compared to sulfate at pH 5.0. The maximum COD removal efficiency was 54.8% and sulfide was produced. The COD and sulfate removal efficiencies as well as the total sulfide production profiles in the IFB reactor fed with sulfate were modeled using a three-layered artificial neural network (ANN). The results showed that the developed ANN model with a topology of 3-7-3 was able to give good predictions of the performance variables. Moreover, the sensitivity analysis from ANN showed that this process is mainly pH dependent.
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Acknowledgments
This research was financially supported by the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate program in Environmental Technologies for Contaminated Solids, Soils and Sediments () under the grant agreement FPA No. 2010-0009. The authors would like to express their gratitude to the laboratory staff of UNESCO-IHE for analytical support.
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Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 142 • Issue 9 • September 2016
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© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Nov 26, 2014
Accepted: Jun 9, 2015
Published online: Aug 7, 2015
Discussion open until: Jan 7, 2016
Published in print: Sep 1, 2016
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