The Effect of HRT and SRT on Treatment Efficiency of Activated Sludge Process for Low Concentration Municipal Sewage

저농도 도시하수 처리를 위한 활성슬러지공정에서 HRT 및 SRT가 처리효율에 미치는 영향

Most of the municipal wastewater treatment plants operated in Korea are designed for high concentrations municipal sewage. However, activated sludge process employed by municipal wastewater treatment plant is operated at low organic loading. The objective of this study was to determine optimum operating condition of activated sludge process for treatment of low concentration municipal sewage. Three bench scale activated sludge reactors were operated to investigate the effect of HRT and SRT on the COD and TSS removal efficiency. The average concentration of TSS, SCOD, SBOD and TKN in influent were 118mg/l, 61mg/l, 21mg/l, and 12mg/l, respectively. The activated sludge reactors operated with various HRT and SRT showed about 89-93% TSS removal efficiency. HRT and SRT does not affect the TSS removal efficiency of actvatied sludge process significantly. However, HRT affected the SCOD removal efficiency slightly. As the HRT decreases from 13hours to 3hours, the SCOD removal efficiency decreases from 67% to 56%. The average effluent TCOD concentration of the reactor operated with 3hours of HRT was approximatly 40-45mg/l. Kinetic coefficient yield (Yt) and decay coefficients(Kd) were 0.594-0.954 mgMLVSS/mgCOD and $0.0197-0.0317day^{-1}$, respectively. Low concentration municipal sewage can be treated with 3 hours of HRT without effluent quality deterioration and SRT does not affect the substrate removal efficiency at this operation condition.