With industrial water contaminating our natural resources, there’s a dire need for installing productive wastewater or sewage treatment plants. Such plants are efficient in treating wastewater collected from various industries and remove pollutants through multiple processes (chemical, physical, and biological). The basic principle of any wastewater or sewage treatment plant is to expedite the fundamental process of purifying water. Such plants mostly operate in two major steps; primary and secondary. In the primary stage, solids in the sewage are allowed to settle and removed. In the secondary step, multiple biological processes are used to purify the wastewater.

Numerous technologies have been developed to acknowledge various types of reactors to purify industrial and sewage wastewater. Fluidized Aerobic Bio-Reactor is one of them and is also referred to as the FAB technology to treat wastewater.

What is Fluidised Aerobic Bio-Reactor?

Fluidized Aerobic Bio-Reactor (FAB) is a modern wastewater treatment technology that is a more reliable choice over conventional wastewater treatment plants. Most treatment plants are power-intensive and require a large land area for its structure. FAB, when compared to traditional sewage treatment plants, is an efficient option with great space-saving.

Working of Fluidised Aerobic Bio-Reactor

In the field of aerobic biological treatment technology, FBR reactors are the latest advancements. It employs ring pac media within its tank. These media are specially developed material with suitable density and capability of fluidizing with aeration devices such as diffusers. Utilizing ring pac media ensures achieving an outstanding BOD/COD removal productivity.

Initially, the wastewater is pumped at adequate velocity for fluidizing on a bed of small media. In this fluidized state, the media provides a large specific surface for developing biomass concentration ranging from 10 kg/m3 to 40 kg/m3. For realizing aerobic treatment processes, the reactor is aerated. The aeration is done by calculating the liquid in the oxygenator, where the oxygen is bubbled. At times when there’s a requirement of high re-circulation rates, then the reactor can be aerated directly to suffice the high oxygen demand in the reactor.

As several species of bacteria and microorganisms can adhere to supporting matrices, these fluidized bed reactors are effectively employed to immobilize the bacteria on solid surfaces. The media used in the reactor makes the treatment significantly productive by reducing the BOD (Biochemical Oxygen Demand) and COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand) content in the presence of oxygen.

Benefits of Using FAB Technology

When compared for the same BOD reduction task, the FBR requires lesser hydraulic retention time (HRT) than extended aeration or activation sludge process.
It achieves high loading rates with a high bio-film surface area.
It renders an automatic system with odorless operations.
It requires a lesser footprint area for installation than conventional wastewater plant.
Along with less area, maintenance and operation cost for operations is also less for an FBR sewage treatment plant.
Effective in removing E-coli (coliform) and sustains better oxygen transfer efficiency.

Sewage is undoubtedly a resource that can be recycled for various purposes such as cooling towers, car wash, gardening, toilet flushing, and much more. Fluidized Aerobic Bio-Reactors can be employed in standardized sewage treatment plants for various industries, including municipal corporations, SEZs, housing societies, and many more.