A Review of an Integrated Anaerobic-Aerobic Systems for the Treatment of Food Processing Wastewater

Food processing industry is believed to be one of the most polluting industry as it produces highly polluted wastewater in term of organic and suspended matter. Previously, such wastewater has been treated by anaerobic and aerobic treatment. At present, the effluent standards become such stringent that it is not possible to achieve it by using conventional anaerobic and aerobic treatment. Solution of this problem is to utilize integrated treatment consisting of both aerobic and anaerobic treatment. This paper provides the review of the currently available integrated treatment used in food processing wastewater treatment. Integrated bioreactor is classified into two types based on configuration, which are (1) Integration bioreactor with physical separation of aerobic and anaerobic zone and (2) Integration bioreactor without physical separation of aerobic and anaerobic zone. The integration of anaerobic and aerobic process enhances the overall degradation efficiency. The advantageous of various integrated bioreactor are highlighted and compared. The comparison of various bioreactor shows that the use of integrated bioreactor without physical separation is advantageous over other bioreactor as it requires less space, less capital cost and higher COD removal.