Performance of UASB Post Treatment Technologies for Sewage Treatment in Surat City

Abstract

Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) process is a popular process for treatment of sewage in India due to its low power requirement. However, UASB system has many limitations in terms of removal of carbon, nutrients and pathogens. This requires post treatment after UASB to meet the treated water quality standards. Current treatment processes adopted for the post-treatment of anaerobically treated sewage, especially the full-scale UASB reactors in Surat, India are presented. Two full scale treatment plants with different UASB post treatment processes viz., Extended Aeration and Moving Bed Biological Reactor (MBBR) are selected for studies. A pilot study was carried out in a full scale Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) to study the performance of Sequential Batch Reactor (SBR) for treatment of UASB treated sewage and the results are reported for period of Three months. Inlet and outlet parameters such as Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Total Suspended Solids (TSS), etc. for post UASB biological process are presented. The performance of the SBR process was observed to be better among all the processes studied.