Date of Award

Summer 1997

Document Type

Thesis - Restricted

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering

First Advisor

Zitomer, Daniel H.

Second Advisor

Zanoni, A. E.

Third Advisor

Crandall, Clifford J.

Abstract

Biological treatment of wastewater is mostly accomplished by either aerobic or anaerobic processes. There has not been much effort put into developing alternate treatment methods, including the one based on the co-culture of aerobes and anaerobes. Co-culture has not been considered mainly due to the conventional belief that aerobes and anaerobes cannot co-exist. However, studies on microbial ecosystems have discovered interface zones of aerobic and anaerobic colonies called microaerobic zones,. that have a very low concentration of dissolved oxygen, sufficient for partial aerobic respiration, but not high enough to inhibit some anaerobes. These findings motivate to pursue the development of a combined aerobic-anaerobic system for biological wastewater treatment, with the goal of combining the individual merits of both aerobic and anaerobic processes. A number of unanswered questions exist, such as what is the range of oxidation rates that can maintain a mixed culture, what is the efficiency and quality of the treatment system, is it advantageous over the other existing systems from both cost and performance view points, is there an optimum aeration rate for the best performance. This research is an effort to study the feasibility of a combined aerobic-methanogenic system, and to verify its treatment capabilities. Hence, this research project proposes to culture aerobes and anaerobes together in limited-aeration environments under different aeration rates, and to study wastewater treatment capabilities by measuring COD and BOD removal rate, effluent quality and process stability.

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