COD reduction of textile effluent in three-phase fluidized bed bioreactor using Pseudomonas aureofaciens and Escherichia coli

This paper investigated the effect of mixed cultures of Pseudomonas aureofaciens and Escherichia coli and air as gas on degradation of chemical oxygen demand (COD) in three-phase inverse fluidized beds (TPIFBs) for textile effluents with initial COD of 1200 ppm (effluent 1) and 640 ppm (effluent 2). Investigators focused on the importance of different design of gas spargers of the TPIFB for checking its effect on COD reduction performance. For this purpose, four different gas spargers were fabricated for gas flow entry into bioreactor with different  % open area: Gas sparger 1 (18% open area), sparger 2 (10.42% open area), sparger 3 (8.077% open area) and sparger 4 (1.53% open area). These percentage open area decided the amount of gas flow in a unit time in batch studies, which in turn rely mainly on superficial gas velocity. The reduction in COD was measured at two different superficial gas velocity (0.00343 and 0.004068 m/s) and at two ratio of static bed height to diameter (H/D) of 0.5 and 0.25 in an aerobic mode. Textile effluent 1 resulted in 98.07% COD reduction with sparger 3 and discharged at 23.14 ppm in 28 h. Textile effluent 2 resulted in 96.5% COD reduction with sparger 2 and discharged at 22.4 ppm in 22 h. The resulting COD values of Effluent 1 and effluent 2 were in range of discharge limit and resulted at a low gas velocity of 0.00343 m/s and low H/D ratio of 0.25. The gas holdup correlation was found to be ε g = 0.0064 U g0.98 .