International Journal of Engineering, Volume (2) : Issue (4) 1 Experimental Scrutinization on Treatment of Industrial Effluents and Models Representing the Kinetics for Aerobic Digestion

An experimental study is undertaken for the treatment of distillery effluent using aerobic reactor. Sewage sludge was used as a seed culture to treat this effluent and the system was operated with different initial concentrations. The microorganisms present in sewage sludge were isolated by agar – plate method and their populations were reported. The reactor performance characteristics i.e., Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Total Suspended Solids (TSS) and Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), pH were analyzed for different concentrations of influent. The effects of initial substrate concentration on various characteristics with respect to time were reported. The performance of the three models namely, the First Order, Diffusional and Singh models in representing the kinetic data of the present work were analyzed. The results indicate that the First Order and Diffusional models are best suited for an aerobic digestion