2011 Volume 4 Issue 2 Pages 47-53
The swine wastewater from Sunchon swine farm was decomposed using a sequencing batch reactor (SBR). The reactor body was fabricated using a plexi glass cylinder and its total volume was 20L with 15L of working volume. Each operating cycle consisted of five phases (fill, react, settle, draw and idle) with a total cycle time of 8 hours, thus resulting in three cycles per day (with 5 days of hydraulic retention time and 41 days of solid retention time). The cycles of the SBR system were controlled by a designed on-site computer and custom software. The results showed removal efficiencies of 85.5%, 80.3% and 87.2% for BOD, COD and TP respectively. It was found however that there were some non-satisfactory results, only attaining removal efficiencies of 61.0%, 31.2% and 54.5% for TN, NH3-N and NO3--N respectively. This was possibly due to the lack of enough carbon source and the inadequate aeration rate. It was also observed that removal efficiencies of 61.4%, 62.8%, 77.6% and 73.2% could be obtained for TS, TVS, TSS and TVSS respectively. The study showed that the SBR system could be used to attain good removal efficiencies of BOD, COD and nutrients in swine wastewater treatment if it is supplied with sufficient carbon source for de-nitrification and optimum aeration for nitrification.
