Biological nutrient removal in a full-scale SBR treating piggery wastewater: results and modelling

Research activities carried out at ENEA during the last few years allowed development of a Sequencing Batch Reactor (SBR) that is able to remove biologically organic waste, nitrogen and phosphorus and that showed to be particularly suited to obtain low effluent nutrient concentrations even starting from concentrated wastes. This plant, in more than one year of operation, is quite steadily obtaining more than 98% removal of nitrogen, phosphorus and COD. On the basis of the experimental results, a simulation model has been built and calibrated. The model showed the potential to be used for forecasting the behaviour of the process, being able to reproduce a process imbalance that followed the tentative reduction of aeration time.