Nutrients requirements in biological industrial wastewater treatment

Wastewaters from olive mills and pulp and paper mill industries in Jordan have been characterized and treated using laboratory scale anaerobic and aerobic sequencing batch reactors, respectively. Nutrient requirements for these two industrial wastewaters were found to be less than what is usually reported in the literature for C:N:P ratio of 100:5:1 for aerobic treatment and 250:5:1 for anaerobic treatment. This was ascribed to the low biomass observed yield coefficients and relatively low removal efficiencies in these wastewaters. It was found that for anaerobic treatment of olive mills wastewater COD:N:P ratio of about 900:5:1.7 was able to achieve more than 80% COD removal. The observed biomass yield was about 0.06 kg VSS per kg of COD degraded. For extended aeration aerobic treatment of pulp and paper mill wastewater COD:N:P ratio of about 170:5:1.5 was able to achieve more than 75% COD removal. The observed biomass yield was about 0.31 kg VSS per kg of COD degraded. In both these wastewaters nutrients were not added. A simple formula is introduced to calculate nutrient requirements based on removal efficiency and observed biomass yield coefficient.