The start-up performance of modified anaerobic baffled reactor (MABR) for the treatment of recycled paper mill wastewater

The reduction of the duration of start-up and the improvement of process control are important factors in order to increase the competitiveness of anaerobic baffled reactor systems. In this paper, the start-up performance of modified anaerobic baffled reactor (MABR) in treating recycled paper mill (RPM) wastewater at batch and continuous phases was investigated. In batch phase, about 3.5 L (10 d HRT) of RPM wastewater were added daily to the reactor for 9 days, while 7 L/day (5 d HRT) was pumped into the reactor during the continuous phase. During batch and continuous phase, it was found that methane yield increased significantly from 0.003 to 0.09 L CH4/g COD day. During the whole start-up operation, the system demonstrated a remarkable performance of high COD removal efficiency (up to 71%) on day 30. Nevertheless, the pH was slightly decreased (from 7.3 to 6.2) during the period of phase 1 (batch) and phase 2 (continuous).