Enhancement of Organic Removal of Compact Extended Aeration Reactor (CEAR) by using Attached Growth System

Compact Extended Aeration Reactor (CEAR) is a system that practices the concept of integration of wastewater treatment system in which the reactor comprises of aeration tank, anoxic tank and clarifier and one of the challenge of the CEAR system is to improve the treatment system efficiency. Extension to that, enhancement on the reactor has been made by implementing attached growth system in addition to the existing suspended growth system and it makes the purpose of this project which is to evaluate the performance of CEAR in removing organic from wastewater before enhancement and also evaluation after enhancement on the CEAR. For the enhancement of CEAR, a packing medium for attached growth known as Aero-Packer has been designed and installed in the aeration tank as well as Bio-Balls in the anoxic tank. This Aero-Packer helps to increase the capacity of the activated sludge systems in the same tank volume. The project is using a reactor model with total volume of 0.176 m3. The reactor has been operated with real biomass obtained from UTP STP aeration tank and been fed with synthetic wastewater made from dog food with flowrate of 15 L/day. As for experimental purpose, samples are taken from the influent, aeration tank, anoxic tank and effluent before test on BOD, COD, TSS and MLSS can be conducted. The result shows that the reactor performance before enhancement is at average level with reduction percentage of 67% of BOD, 64% of COD and 75% of TSS with MLSS average value of 6500 mg/L. With the installation of Aero-Packer inside the aeration tank, the reduction percentage increases with 77% for BOD, 80% for COD and 85% for TSS with average MLSS reading of 7556 mg/L. This shows that the performance of the reactor has been better with the implementation of attached growth system. However, as the process of activated sludge with fixed-film packing is very complex and there are issues regarding to understanding of the biofilm area and activity, the process designs are empirical and based on lab-scale results.