biogas production from a spearmint essential oil wastewater using an up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket reactor

Less energy required due to the omission of aeration and biogas production made anaerobic wastewater treatment more usable rather than aerobic wastewater treatment in the industry up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket (uasb) reactors have appeared as one of the most commonly used methods for the wastewater treatment of pharmaceutical industrythe aim of this work was to assess the biogas production rate in a lab-scale uasb reactor, fed with spearmint essential oil wastewater (seow) seow contains a high level of cod (67575±2142 mg/l), and phenolic compounds (3827±875 mg/l) during the 102 days uasb operation at high sludge retention time and hydraulic retention time of 60 h, organic loading rate (olr) was increased from 012 to 270 g cod/ld through increasing influent seow concentration the optimum olr was found to be 270 g cod/ld, where 718±19% cod reduction with 32201±7167 l/d biogas production containing 620±56% and 234±48% methane and carbon dioxide, respectively was obtained at the higest olr employed, biogas yield and specific biogas production rate were 498548±98050 l/kg codremoved and 0658±0146 l/g mlssd, respectively with the net heating value of 238 (mj/m3)