ANAEROBIC-AEROBIC TREATMENT
OF
A WHEAT STARCH PLANT EFFLUENT
A CASE HISTORY
William A. Bonkoski, President
Jan E. Sointio, Manager
Gregory R. Gillespie, Development Engineer
SORIGONA, INC.
Woodbury, New York 11797
INTRODUCTION
For many years, interest has existed in the area of treatment of industrial wastewater by means
other than the conventional aerobic alternatives. Effecting treatment that utilizes anaerobic
microorganisms has long been recognized as a potential alternative to relatively costly aerobic
options.
The ANAMET process was one of the first such techniques to be successfully demonstrated at the
full scale level [1].
In 1970, research work was begun by the Swedish Sugar Company into methods for treating
wastewaters discharging from the company's beet sugar processing facilities. Environmental concerns
centered not only on the impact of large amounts of organic materials on local receiving water bodies,
but also on odor problems that developed while wastewater was held in storage ponds. Two years of
bench scale and pilot scale plant testing culminated with the commissioning of the first full scale
ANAMET plant at the Swedish Sugar Company's beet processing facility in Ortofta, Sweden [2].
Research work performed in the development of the ANAMET process indicated the viability of
an anaerobic approach to treatment of sugar factory wastewaters. The work also revealed, however,
that anaerobic treatment alone would not effect a sufficiently high level of treatment as dictated by
local requirements. It was found that the combination of an anaerobic treatment step followed by an
aerobic step did provide the necessary level of treatment. The integral combination of these two steps
in a single system also provided numerous other benefits that are discussed later in this paper.
Since 1972, and the first successful demonsration of the ANAMET process, research work has
continued to refine the process, optimize system design and explore application of the process to
wastewaters other than from beet sugar processing. Initial emphasis on new applications centered on
the food processing industry in general. Successful tests have been completed on many types of food
processing waste streams such as those from potato processing and distilleries, fruit distilleries, beet
molasses, baker's yeast, wheat starch, and corn processing [3]. In addition to ten operating systems at
beet sugar factories, six other full scale systems are operating, all on food related applications.
With the success demonstrated on relatively easy to treat food industry applications, recent emphasis has included other applications, most notably pulp and paper waste streams. The combined
anaerobic-aerobic appraoch to wastewater treatment has been successfully demonstrated on several
different pulp mill substrates [4]. On two occasions, successful trials have resulted in decisions to install full scale systems. Both of these systems, in Sweden and in Spain, are scheduled for start-up in
1983 with the latter being the largest anaerobic treatment plant yet constructed with a design loading
of 330,000 pounds per day of COD.
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