Ecological clarification of cheese whey prior to anaerobic digestion in upflow anaerobic filter

Anaerobic digestion of cheese whey wastewaters (CW) was investigated in a system consisting of an ecological pretreatment followed by upflow anaerobic filter (UAF). The pretreatment was conducted to solve the inhibition problems during anaerobic treatment of CW caused by the amounts of fats, proteins and carbohydrates and to avoid the major problems of clogging in the reactor. The optimized ecological pretreatment of diluted CW induce removal yields of 50% of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and 60% of total suspended solids (TSS) after acidification by Lactobacillus paracasei at 32 °C during 20 h and neutralization with lime. The pretreated CW was used to feed UAF (35 °C). The effects of organic loading rate (OLR) and hydraulic retention time (HRT) on the pretreated CW anaerobic degradation were examined. The average total COD removals achieved was 80–90%. The performance of the reactor was depressed by increasing the COD concentration to 20 g/l (OLR = 4 g COD/l d) and the COD removal efficiency was reduced to 72%. Significant methane yield (280 l/kg COD removal) was obtained at an HRT of 2 days.