UASB reactor for domestic wastewater treatment at low

Water Science and Technology Vol 49 No 11–12 pp 295–301 © IWA Publishing 2004
temperatures: a comparison between a classical UASB
and hybrid UASB-filter reactor
B. Lew, S. Tarre, M. Belavski and M. Green
Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Technion 32000- Haifa, Israel
(E-mail: benilew@tx.technion.ac.il; shelly@tx.technion.ac.il; michaelb@tx.technion.ac.il;
agmgreen@tx.technion.ac.il)

Abstract The performance of an upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor and a hybrid UASB-filter
reactor was investigated and compared for the treatment of domestic wastewater at different operational
temperatures (28, 20, 14 and 10°C) and loading rates. For each temperature studied a constant CODt
removal was observed as long as the upflow velocity was lower than 0.35 m/h. At these upflow velocities
similar removals were observed for both reactor types at 28 and 20°C, 82 and 72% respectively. However,
at 14 and 10°C the UASB reactor showed a better COD removal (70% and 48%, respectively) than the
hybrid reactor (60% and 38%).
COD removal resulted from biological degradation and solids accumulation in the reactors. At 28°C, a
constant 200 g sludge mass was observed in both reactors and COD removal was attributed to biological
degradation only. At lower temperatures, solids accumulation was observed in addition to biological
degradation with an increase in reactor sludge as the temperature decreased. The decrease in biological
degradation at lower temperatures was offset by solids accumulation and explains the similar overall COD
removal efficiency observed at 28°C, 20°C and 14°C. The decrease in temperature was also followed by an
increase in the effluent TSS concentration in both reactors. At 14 and 10°C a lower effluent TSS
concentration and better performance was observed in the UASB reactor.
Keywords Anaerobic treatment; domestic wastewater; hybrid UASB-filter; temperature effect; UASB

Introduction
Anaerobic processes are an attractive technology for wastewater treatment. The high costs
of aeration and sludge handling associated with aerobic sewage treatment are dramatically
lower as no oxygen is needed and the production of sludge is 3–20 times lower. However,
its use is usually limited to high strength industrial wastewater with soluble substrates.
Domestic wastewater has typically low concentrations of COD, resulting in relatively
small methane production that is insufficient to heat the reactor to more favorable
mesophilic temperatures. Moreover, the relatively high concentration of particulate matter
present in domestic wastewater requires an initial hydrolysis step, which is significantly
affected by temperature and is usually the rate-limiting step in sub-tropical climate regions.
In tropical countries UASB reactors for domestic wastewater have found wide accept-
ance. There are several full-scale plants already in operation in Colombia, Brazil,
Indonesia, India and Egypt and COD removals above 70% have been observed by several
authors (Souza and Foresti, 1996; Chernicharo and Cardoso, 1999; Kalogo and Verstraete,
2000). The effluent quality at these installations is reported to be 140 mg COD/l, 75 mg
BOD/l and 30 mg TSS/l.
At low temperatures, the low hydrolysis rate and a decrease in the degradable organic
matter fraction were found to cause the deterioration of the overall anaerobic reactor per-
formance (Elmitwalli et al., 2001). UASB COD removals of ~65% at 20°C and of 55–65%
at 13–17°C were observed by several authors (Lettinga et al., 1981; Grin et al., 1983; Vieira 295
 and Souza, 1986; Elmitwalli et al., 1999; Seghezzo et al., 2000). A decrease in the effluent
quality was also observed, together with a decline in the gas production rate. Agrawal et al.
(1997) observed a 78% decrease in the gas production rate when the temperature was
reduced from 27°C to 10°C. The low gas production coincided with a 25% lower COD
removal at 10°C than at 27°C, indicating suspended solids accumulation in the reactor.
One possible way to improve the performance of a UASB reactor at low temperatures is
to provide surface area for biomass attachment and growth in the reactor volume above the
B. Lew et al.

sludge blanket (Tilche and Vieira, 1991). This can be accomplished by replacing the typical
gas/solids separator of the classical UASB reactor with filter media. Elmitwalli et al.
(1999) compared the performances of a hybrid UASB-filter and a classical UASB reactor at
13°C. The hybrid UASB-filter reactor reached 64% COD removal, a 4% better removal
than the classical UASB. A better colloidal fraction removal was attributed to the attached
biomass on the filter.
This project concentrates on the effect of temperature on the performance of a UASB
and a hybrid UASB-filter reactor for domestic wastewater treatment, at different upflow
velocities, hydraulic retention times (HRT) and organic loading rates.

Material and methods

Two reactors were constructed of plexiglass with a working volume of 5.3 litres (8.0 cm
diameter, 107.5 cm high), with four sampling ports placed at different heights and an inflow
manifold at the bottom of the reactors to ensure even influent distribution. The hybrid
UASB-filter reactor had 4.0 cm diameter plastic filter rings (100 m2/m3 specific surface
area) filling the top half of the reactor instead of the standard UASB gas/solid separator to
prevent biomass washout (Figure 1). The reactors were filled with 2 litres of granular
sludge taken from a full scale UASB reactor treating food wastewater. The TSS concentra-
tion in the reactors immediately after filling was 130 g TSS/l. The reactors were fed with
domestic wastewater after primary sedimentation from the Neve Sha’anan neighborhood,
Haifa. The wastewater can be classified as a medium strength domestic wastewater
(Metcalf and Eddy, 1991).
In both reactors effluent samples and methane production readings were taken one
hydraulic retention time after inflow sampling. All samples were tested on a regular basis
for pH, BOD, TSS, VSS, CODt, CODs and VFA. Every 20 days 50 ml sludge samples were
taken from the two lower sample ports and were tested for SVI, TSS and VSS. All analyses
were performed according to Standard Methods for the Examination of Water and
Wastewater (APHA, 1995). Effluent COD was characterized in two ways: well mixed sam-
ples were used for CODt and samples allowed to settle for 10 minutes were used for CODs.
COD removal was calculated on the basis of influent CODt. The volatile fatty acids concen-
tration was measured using the five-point titration method (Moosbrugger et al., 1993). The
methane gas produced was collected and measured as described by Haandel and Lettinga
(1994). The dissolved methane in the effluent was calculated according to Henry’s law and
added to the methane gas actually measured.
During start-up, the reactors were operated at 28°C with a retention time of 24 hours to
allow sludge adaptation to domestic wastewater. Afterwards, the retention time was gradu-
ally shortened with the corresponding increase in organic load. At every new retention
time, the reactor was allowed to adjust to the higher load. After the performance reached
steady state for a number of days, the retention time was shortened further. When the exper-
imental regime was completed at 28°C, the same procedure was carried out for reactor tem-
peratures of 20°C, 14°C and 10°C. The reactor was operated at a temperature of 28°C for 6
months and 2 months for each of the other temperatures.
296
 Methane
Methane

Effluent
Effluent

B. Lew et al.
Influent Influent

(a) (b)

Figure 1 Laboratory scale (5.3 litres); (a) UASB reactor equipped with a gas/solid separator; (b) hybrid
UASB-Filter reactor equipped with plastic filter rings

Results and discussion

During the start-up period, both reactor types operated efficiently and the effluent TSS was
constant with an 86.6% removal. The CODt removal increased with time, starting at 79.2%
and reaching 88.5% at the end of the period. The effluent pH was very similar to the influent
pH indicating that VFA were not accumulating in the reactors. At the conclusion of the
start-up period, the reactors were operated at 28°C for six months and the hydraulic reten-
tion time (HRT) was gradually reduced from 24 hours to 1 hour only, with the correspon-
ding increase in organic load from 0.2 to 31.8 g COD/l/day.
For HRTs from 24 to 3 hours (0.04–0.35 m/h upflow velocity), a stable effluent COD
concentration was observed in both reactors, even with the high fluctuation in influent
CODt concentration (200–1,300 mg COD/l). The average total and settleable effluent COD
were 102 (±43) and 81 (±26) mg/l respectively, corresponding to a CODt removal of about
82% and a CODs removal of about 83.5%. The effluent COD concentrations observed even
at long HRT (24 hours) are probably of a non-biodegradable COD nature. Similar effluent
COD concentrations and COD removal were observed by Vieira and Garcia (1992) (83 mg
COD/l/day and 65%), Souza and Foresti (1996) (58 mg COD/l/day and 86%), El-Gohary
and Nasr (1999) (145 mg COD/l/day and 77%) and Kalogo and Verstraete (2000) (97.4 mg
COD/l/day and 71%) for the same temperature.
For HRTs shorter than 3 hours (corresponding to upflow velocities and influent organic
load higher than 0.35 m/h and 5.0 g COD/l/day, respectively) the effluent quality deterio-
rated for both reactor types. While at longer HRTs (from 3 to 24 hours) the COD removal
was always constant (around 82%), it decreased to 54.3% for CODt and 73.8% for CODs at
2 hours HRT and 37.9% for CODt and 59.2% for CODs at 1 hour HRT for both reactors. The
decrease in CODs removal rate can be explained by too short HRT to complete COD degra-
dation. Results of effluent VFA concentration support this observation: at longer HRT the
effluent VFA concentration was close to zero, however, at short HRTs (shorter than 3
hours) the effluent VFA concentration increased when VFA was present in the influent.
A maximum COD removal of between 6.0 and 8.8 g COD/l/day was observed at influent
loadings between 16.4 and 23.8 g COD/l/day. At the highest organic load of 31.8 g
COD/l/day, a decrease to 5.4 g COD removed per litre per day was observed in both reactors.
The decrease in CODt removal can be explained by the sharp increase in effluent TSS from
about 20 mg/l, at HRTs longer than 3 hours, to about 100 mg/l and 220 mg/l, at 2 and 1 hour
HRT respectively (Figure 2). It appears that the higher upflow velocity caused influent sus-
pended solids washout, as opposed to a gradual increase that would be expected if the reten-
tion time was limiting. Batch tests also suggested that the effluent TSS originated from the 297
 influent because of the absence of gas production from the effluent particulate material. When
the reactors were submitted to two different influent TSS concentrations (150 mg TSS/l and
300 mg TSS/l) at different HRTs, the same upflow velocity limitation (0.35 m/h) was
observed. In both cases, both reactors demonstrated a linear relationship between TSS
removal (82%) and TSS loads for HRTs longer than 3 hours, even though the influent TSS
load was much higher for the second case. At shorter HRTs, the TSS removal began to
decrease in both cases, leading to the conclusion that the high upflow velocity was the limiting
B. Lew et al.

rate for both CODt and TSS removal, and not the retention time. The critical upflow velocity
where CODt removal decreased is similar to the range reported by other authors, 0.33 to 0.67
m/h (Collivignarelli et al., 1991; Lettinga and Hulshoff Pol, 1991; Maaskant et al., 1991;
Vieira and Garcia, 1992; Chernicharo and Cardoso, 1999; Kalogo and Verstraete, 2000).
The same upflow velocity limitation was observed at all temperatures studied (28, 20, 14
and 10°C), with an almost constant CODt removal for lower upflow velocities in both reac-
tors. For each temperature studied the CODt removal at HRT longer than 3 hours decreased
with the decrease in the temperature (Table 1). Usually, decreasing the temperature nega-
tively affects the kinetics and therefore increasing the HRT results in removal efficiency
improvement. However, the HRT did not improve COD degradation at upflow velocities
lower than 0.35 m/h. These results suggest a much lower biodegradability at lower temper-
atures of a range of compounds comprising the heterogeneous composition of domestic
wastewater. In addition, it is possible that lower temperatures induced shifts in the bacterial
population with predominantly slower kinetics. The COD removal rates observed at 20°C,
14°C and 10°C are in accordance with results observed by others (Lettinga et al., 1981;
Grin et al., 1983; Vieira and Souza, 1986; Elmitwalli et al., 1999; Seghezzo et al., 2000).
Although COD removal was very similar for both reactors at 28 and 20°C, the results at
14 and 10°C showed a much better COD removal for the classical UASB reactor. These
results cannot be explained by bacteria activity, since methane production rate was very
similar for both reactors at all temperatures studied.

Upflow velocity (m/h)

0.05 0.10 0.15 0.35 1.05
Effluent TSS Concentration (mg/l)

600

500
UASB
400 Hybrid
300

200

100

0
24 21 18 15 12 9 6 3 0

Hydraulic Retention Time (h)

Figure 2 Effluent TSS concentration as a function of HRT and Upflow Velocity at 28°C in the UASB and
hybrid UASB-Filter reactors

Table 1 Maximum COD removal (%) at different temperatures

28°C 20°C 14°C 10°C

Classical UASB 82 72 70 48
Hybrid UASB + filter 82 72 60 38
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 The methane production rate showed a similar pattern at 28°C, 20°C and 14°C. At these
temperatures the methane production increased with increasing influent COD organic load,
up to 10.0 g COD/l/day for 28°C and 5.0 g COD/l/day for 20°C and 14°C. At higher loads a
constant methane production of 1,100, 225 and 85 ml CH4/l/day was observed for 28°C,
20°C and 14°C, respectively. At 10°C a very low methane production was observed for all
the inflow organic loads, 25 ml CH4/l/day.
The calculated temperature activity coefficient based on the maximum methane produc-

B. Lew et al.
tion was 1.220 (R2 = 0.95), which was in the upper range of reported values for anaerobic
processes (Gujer and Zehnder, 1983; Haandel and Lettinga, 1994). Moreover, the experi-
mental temperature activity coefficient is higher than the one observed for methanogenic
bacteria in batch experiments with granular sludge, 1.066 (R2 = 0.92). Based on these
results, it can be concluded that the hydrolytic bacteria were more affected by temperature
changes than the methanogenic bacteria. As seen, the maximum methane production rate
showed a decrease with temperature, as with the CODt removal. However, the decrease in
the maximum methane production was much more pronounced than the decrease in the
CODt removal. This phenomenon can be explained by suspended solids entrapment (accu-
mulation) in the reactor, which resulted in better COD removal, but did not improve
methane production.
The phenomenon of suspended solids accumulation in the reactors was not apparent at
28°C. The sludge mass in both reactors during summer conditions (28°C) had a constant
value of 200 g and a constant SVI value of 10 ml/g. In contrast, at lower temperatures solids
of different characteristics accumulated on top of the typically black granular sludge.
Solids with a brown floc-like appearance, with no gas production in a batch test conducted
in the laboratory and with a higher SVI (38.8 ml/g) value. Seghezzo et al. (2000) studying a
UASB reactor at 15°C also observed lower methanogenic activity in the upper part of the
sludge blanket.
As the temperature decreased and the rate of hydrolysis decreased, the daily increase in
the reactor sludge was greater. The increase in the accumulation of particulate matter in the
reactors roughly equaled the decrease in the biological degradation rate with temperature
and explains the similar overall COD removal efficiencies obtained at 28°C, 20°C and
14°C for each reactor, as observed in Table 1.
Due to the higher SVI value, the flocculent type sludge had a greater sensitivity to
upflow velocities than the granular sludge, explaining the accumulation of the particulate
material on top of the typical bacterial granules and the increase in the effluent TSS concen-
tration at upflow velocities higher than 0.35 m/h (Figure 2). Moreover, the sensitivity to
upflow velocities together with the increase in the TSS accumulation in the reactor with the
decrease in the temperature led to an increase in the effluent TSS concentration at longer
HRTs with the decrease in temperature for both reactors (Table 2). Indeed, a much higher
effluent TSS concentration was observed in the hybrid UASB-filter reactor at 14 and 10°C
than in the classical UASB. This higher effluent TSS concentration can explain the
better performance of the classical UASB at lower temperatures (14 and 10°C) observed in
Table 1.

Table 2 Effluent TSS concentration (mg/l) at upflow velocities lower than 0.35 m/h, at different
temperatures

28°C 20°C 14°C 10°C

Classical UASB 17 25 60 120

Hybrid UASB + filter 17 25 80 150
299
 During the transition from winter to summer conditions (10°C to 28°C) the methane pro-
duction initially increased and then gradually declined over time, reaching values similar to
the previous summer (28°C) for both reactors. In contrast, CODt removal at the beginning
of the new warmer season was very low (59%) in comparison to the previous summer. The
low CODt removal suggests that the high gas production observed was due to the degrada-
tion of the accumulated suspended matter and not the influent organic matter. An improve-
ment in CODt removal was observed with time, reaching again 82% after 40 days. The
B. Lew et al.

improvement in CODt removal together with the reduction in the gas production indicates
that the accumulated matter was exhausted and influent degradation reached the values
observed in the first summer season.
No biofilm growth was observed on the filters in the hybrid reactor at the end of the
experiments. The filters were removed from the reactor and some suspended solids accu-
mulation was observed on it, however, these solids formed a very fragile layer, which was
easily removed.

Conclusions
Both reactor designs gave similar performance. At summer conditions (20–28°C) COD
removal rates above 72% can be obtained in both reactors. At lower temperatures
(14–10°C) when the bacterial activity is lower, solids accumulation in the reactor is more
pronounced with better solids retention in the classical UASB. In both reactors, the accu-
mulated sludge from the winter is subsequently digested in the following summer, which is
evidenced by a large gas production at the beginning of the new warm season.
Based on the results of this research project it can be concluded that the classical UASB
reactor and the hybrid UASB-filter reactor can be a good alternative for domestic waste-
water treatment even in temperate climates. The hybrid UASB reactor containing filter
rings showed no advantage and at lower temperatures performed slightly worse than the
conventional UASB reactor.

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