A research study submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering, School of Environment, Resources and Development

Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1986

Distillery effluent, was used in the anaerobic fermentation experiments conducted under different temperature conditions in suspended growth reactors, to determine the extent of its degradation and the effect of temperature in the process. From treatability tests, the wastewater was found to have a limited degradability and proved inhibitory to methanogenic bacterial activity. Over a wide range of COD loading rates tried in the experiments, the maximum degradation was at 35 ̕c where for a detention time of 30 days and an influent COD concentration of 5000 mg/1, the COD removal was only 58.7% However, at short detention times such as 4 hours and under typical hot climate temperature conditions, methanogenic activity was still observed, though the percentage degradation of the COD loaded to the reactors was only 34.1% Temperature did not have any profound effect on the acidogenic process. Experiments carried out at 35 ̕c resulted in maximum methane production rates per unit volume of the fen mentor, compared to those at 24 ̕c and in hot climate. The Downward Stationary Fixed Film (DSFF) reactor was found to perform better than the suspended growth reactor when comparisons were made in terms of the daily gas and methane production and percentage COD degradation.