Treatment of cheese whey using anaerobic hybrid/aerobic CSTR systems

Abstract

The volume of wastewaters originating from dairy production has been increasing day by day parallel with the increasing dairy production and 90 percent of those wastewaters consist of cheese whey wastewater. Cheese whey has a high strength structure and cannot be treated by only aerobic biological treatment. The scope of this study, was to investigate the treatment of cheese whey wastewater in a system consisting of an anaerobic hybrid reactor followed by CSTR. Bio-one™ (microbial liquid fertilizer) was used to accelerate the start-up period of the anaerobic hybrid reactor. Bio-one ™ addition to the anaerobic sludge resulted significantly high COD removal efficiency and methane generation with shorter acclimation period in the start-up phase. In this study, maximum COD removal efficiency (91 %) was obtained at 2.53 kg COD.m-3.d-1 OLR and 3.2 days of HRT in anaerobic hybrid reactor. Total COD removal efficiency of the sequential anaerobic/aerobic system was 96 %. It can be concluded that operating an anaerobic hybrid reactor after a CSTR for 412 days was an effective method for the treatment of cheese whey wastewater.