anaerobic biofilm reactor system efficiency in sugar cane industry wastewater treatment

background: the disposal the wastewater sugar extraction to the rivers and environment cause contamination and is considered as a threat to the marine life and the environment. thus, treatment of the wastewater is necessary. investigating the reduction of the pollution load of cane industry with anaerobic sequencing batch biofilm reactor (asbbr) in the laboratory scale is the purpose of this study. methods: in this study, the performance of asbbr was investigated to treat the sugar cane industry’s wastewater for eight months. the total and effective volume of the reactor was 7 liters. the studied reactor was activated in 35ºc with organic loading rate (olr) of 0.25 g cod/l.d and surface loading rate (slr ) of 0.33 mg cod/m 2 .d of with feeding industrial molasses as the main substrate that had 1075 mg/l cod and 450 mg/l bod 5 . an operation cycle of the reactor was lodged for 24 hours, including, the feed time:  23 minutes, the reaction time 22 hours and 14 minutes, the settle time: 1 hour, and the decant time: 23 minutes. findings: the optimum olr and slr were 8 gcod/l.d and 10.67 mgcod/m 2 .d, respectively. in these loadings, the cod was decreased from 32270 ± 351 mg/l to 6146 ± 2222 mg/l with 81 ± 7% the removal efficiency. the best removal efficiency of system in this loading was 91.5%. the amount of biogas production was 3.74 liter per liter of reactor volume. conclusion: the asbbr is able to reduce the high amount of cod up to 32000 mg/l. in general, this reactor could be a suitable alternative in treatment of sugar cane industries wastewater.