DESIGN STUDY OF AN AEROBIC GRANULAR SLUDGE BIOREACTOR USING CFD

Aerobic granular sludge technology has become very attractive for wastewater treatment because a lower footprint of bioreactor and important energy savings comparing with conventional biological treatment of wastewater. This technology is applied at full-scale only in sequential batch reactor (SBR) configuration. Using continuous flow bioreactor for AGS technology seems to be more convenient for upgrading existing wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) with conventional biological treatment. This paper presents a theoretical simulation study conducted using computational fluid dynamics technique (CFD) for the simulation domain consisting of the bioreactor and area for recycling of granules in order to identify the optimal geometry of an experimental installation. Turbulent k-epsilon 2D and 3D mixture model in FLUENT are considered. The flow in the domain of study is simulated in two situations: water and air-water mixture.