ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY

INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

SCHOOL OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

WATER SUPPLY AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING M.SC. PROGRAM

WASTE WATER TREATMENT AND MANAGEMENT ASSIGNMENT 3:

ANAEROBIC SYSTEM AND FLUDIZED BED REACTORS

ANAEROBIC SYSTEM AND FLUDIZED BED REACTORS

By ASHENAFI ZINABIE GSR/1340/08

Submitted to; To: - Dr. Eng'r. GASHAW.Y
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Contents
1 FLUIDIZED BED REACTOR (FBR) .................................................................................. 1
1.1 INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................... 1
1.2 Applications A fluidized bed reactor (FBR) ..................................................... 1
2 Advantages ................................................................................................................ 2
3 BEHAVIOUR OF FLUIDIZED BED .................................................................................. 3
4 Minimum Fluidization Velocity: ................................................................................. 4
5 Objective ..................................................................................................................... 4
6 Fluidized bed reactor ................................................................................................ 5
7 Fluidized bed reactor Process .................................................................................. 5
8 Mass Transfer In Fluidized Beds ................................................................................. 6
9 Types of Fluidized bed reactor ................................................................................. 6
10 Advantages and Disadvantages of Fluidized Bed reactors ............................ 8
11 Design Parameters and Criteria for FBR .............................................................. 8
12 Applications of FBR ............................................................................................... 10
13 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................... 11

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1 FLUIDIZED BED REACTOR (FBR)

1.1 INTRODUCTION
A fluidized bed reactor (FBR) is a type of reactor device that can be used to carry out a variety of
multiphase chemical reactions. In this type of reactor, a fluid (gas or liquid) is passed through a
granular solid material (usually a catalyst) at high enough velocities to suspend the solid and cause
it to behave as though it were a fluid. Uniform particle mixing, uniform temperature gradients and
ability to operate reactor in continuous state are some of its advantage which make it one of the
widely used reactor in today’s industrial world.
The solid substrate (the catalytic material upon which chemical species react) material in the
fluidized bed reactor is typically supported by a porous plate, known as a distributor. The fluid is
then forced through the distributor up through the solid material. At lower fluid velocities, the
solids remain in place as the fluid passes through the voids in the material. This is known as a
packed reactor. As the fluid velocity is increased, the reactor will reach a stage where the force of
the fluid on the solids is enough to balance the weight of the solid material. This stage is known
as incipient fluidization and occurs at this minimum fluidization velocity. Once this minimum
velocity is surpassed, the contents of the reactor bed begin to expand and swirl around much like
an agitated tank or boiling pot of water. The reactor is now a fluidized bed. Depending on the
operating conditions and properties of solid phase various flow regimes can be observed in this
reactor.

1.2 Applications A fluidized bed reactor (FBR)

Today fluidized bed reactors are still used to produce gasoline and other fuels, along with many
other chemicals. Many industrially produced polymers are made using FBR technology, such as
rubber, vinyl chloride, polyethylene, and styrene‟s. Various utilities also use FBR‟s for coal
gasification, nuclear power plants, and water and waste treatment settings. Used in these
applications, fluidized bed reactors allow for a cleaner, more efficient process than previous
standard reactor technologies.

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2. Advantages
Uniform Particle Mixing: Due to the intrinsic fluid-like behavior of the solid material, fluidized
beds do not experience poor mixing as in packed beds. This complete mixing allows for a
uniform product that can often be hard to achieve in other reactor designs. The elimination of
radial and axial concentration gradients also allows for better fluid-solid contact, which is
essential for reaction efficiency and quality.
Uniform Temperature Gradients: Many chemical reactions require the addition or removal of
heat. Local hot or cold spots within the reaction bed, often a problem in packed beds, are
avoided in a fluidized situation such as an FBR. In other reactor types, these local temperature
differences, especially hotspots, can result in product degradation. Thus FBRs are well suited
to exothermic reactions. Also bed-to-surface heat transfer coefficients for FBRs are high.
Ability to Operate Reactor in Continuous State: The fluidized bed nature of these reactors
allows for the ability to continuously withdraw product and introduce new reactants into the
reaction vessel. Operating at a continuous process state allows manufacturers to produce their
various products more efficiently due to the removal of start-up conditions in batch processes.

The fluidized-bed reactor has the ability to process large volumes of fluid. For the catalytic
cracking of petroleum naphthas to form gasoline blends, for example, the virtues of the fluidized-
bed reactor drove its competitors from the market. Fluidization occurs when small solid particles
are suspended in an upward flowing stream of fluid.
The fluid velocity is sufficient to suspend the particles, but it is not large enough to carry them out
of the vessel. The solid particles swirl around the bed rapidly, creating excellent mixing among
them. The material “fluidized” is almost always a solid and the “fluidizing medium” is either a
liquid or gas. The characteristics and behavior of a fluidized bed are strongly dependent on both
the solid and liquid or gas properties. Nearly all the significant commercial applications of
fluidized-bed technology concern gas-solid systems, so these will be treated in this section.
It is a process for destroying fluoride in a gas containing such fluoride by contacting the gas with
a fluidized bed of metal particles capable of reacting with such fluoride wherein the metal particles
have a particle size essentially no greater than approximately 300 microns. The process can be
conducted in parallel connected switching fluidized beds wherein the beds are switched based

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upon achieving a predetermined bed height expansion based upon the reaction of the metal
particles with such fluoride

Wastewater treatment process involves the physical, chemical and Biological unit operations. The
chemical and biological unit processes is carried out in vessels or tanks commonly known as
reactors.

Various types of reactors are use for wastewater treatment. Among, Fluidized Bed Reactor (FBR)
is one of the recent methods used in this field. The basic concept of the process consists of passing
wastewater up through a packed bed of particles at a velocity sufficient to fluidize the particles.
As the flow of the wastewater passes upward through the biological bed, very dense concentrations
of microorganisms growing on the surface of the bed particles consume the biodegradable waste
contaminants in the liquid. Various types of packing materials can be used.FBR combines the best
features of activated sludge and trickling filtration into one process.
3. BEHAVIOUR OF FLUIDIZED BED
Fluidization is an operation by which the beds of solid particles are transformed into a fluid like
state through contact with a fluid. The fluidized bed offers the advantage of proper mixing over
other contacting methods in which the bed materials are fully suspended in a fluid stream. Several
factors affect the bed behaviour out of which the following parameters have been studied in the
present work for knowing the quality of fluidization.
Minimum Fluidization Velocity (umf)
Bed Pressure Drop (ΔP)
Bed Expansion Ratio (R)
Bed Fluctuation Ratio (r)
Fluidization quality (FQ)
At gas flow rates above the point of minimum fluidization, a fluidized bed appears much like a
vigorously boiling liquid; bubbles of gas rise rapidly and burst on the surface, and the emulsion
phase is thoroughly agitated. The bubbles form very near the bottom of the bed, very close to the
distributor plate and as a result the design of the distributor plate has a significant effect on
fluidized-bed characteristics. Catalytic reactions in dense bubbling fluidized beds usually use fine
Geldart A solids that have a very small minimum fluidizing velocity. Consequently, industrial
operations are usually run at many multiples of umf, or with u0/umf >>1, ub/umf >>1. For this

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situation, Kunii and Levenspiel proposed a “bubbling bed model”. It is based on following
assumptions:
Fresh feed gas containing reactant A at CAi enters the bed and, on contact with the fine catalyst
powder, reacts there according to a first-order reaction.
The bed consists of three regions: bubble, cloud and emulsion, with the wake region considered
to be part of the cloud. We designate these regions by the letters b, c, and e; we designate the
reactant concentration at any level in these regions as CAb, CAc, and CAe, respectively.
At low gas velocities in the range of fluidization, the rising bubbles contain very few solid particles.
The remainder of the bed has a much higher concentration of solids in it and is known as the
emulsion phase of the fluidized bed. The bubbles are shown as the bubble phase. The cloud phase
is an intermediate phase between the bubble and emulsion phases. After the drag exerted on the
particles equals the net gravitational force exerted on the particles, that is
ΔP = g(ρc −ρg) (1 − ε)h (3.2)
For Rep < 10, the minimum fluidization velocity is given by:

2 Minimum Fluidization Velocity:

When a fluid passes upwards through the interstices of a bed of solids without the slightest
disturbance of the solids, the bed is called a fixed bed. With further increase in the velocity of
fluid, the entire bed of solids is suspended and behaves as if its weight is counterbalanced by the
force of buoyancy. At this point, all the particles are fully suspended in the fluid. This is called
onset of fluidization and the velocity of fluid at which it happens is called minimum fluidization
velocity, which is one of the most important parameter for the design of fluidizers.
5. Objective
The main objective of this semester paper is to understand the basic concepts of Biological
Fluidized bed reactor in its principal process.

Additionally, identifying the types, advantages and disadvantages, design parameters and
applications of the process are the specific objectives of the pepper.

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3 Fluidized bed reactor

4 Fluidized bed reactor Process

The Fluidized Bed Reactor (FBR) is a recent process innovation in wastewater treatment, which
utilizes small, fluidized media for cell immobilization and retention. Main application of the
fluidized bed reactor is in the field of biological treatment of wastewater. Aerobic as well as
anaerobic fluidized bed reactors (FBR) have received increasing attention for being an effective
technology to treat water and wastewater. Its most important features are - the fixation of
microorganisms on the surface of small-sized particles, leading to high content of active
microorganisms and large surface area available for reaction with the liquid; the high flow rate
(low residence time) which can be achieved, leading to high degree of mixing decreased external
mass transfer resistances and to large reduction in size of the plant; and the removal of risk of
clogging.

The basic concept of the process consists of passing wastewater up through a packed bed of
particles at a velocity sufficient to impart motion to or fluidize the particles. As the flow of the
wastewater passes upward through the biological bed, very dense concentrations of organisms
growing on the surface of the bed particles consume the biodegradable waste contaminants in the
liquid. Fig. 1 is a schematic of the basic unit of the process, showing the entire fluidized bed reactor
with the wastewater flowing upwards through the bed, fluidizing the particles in the liquid. Above
the bed is a clear water zone wherein the particles separate from the liquid.

Fig: 1, Fluidized Bed Biofilm Reactor

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From a biological point of view, the attached microorganisms on the suspended particles may
include any of the aerobic, facultative, or anaerobic organisms typically found in trickling filters
and suspended growth type of treatment systems. The predominating species would depend
entirely on the waste contaminant being consumed and whether an aerobic or anaerobic
environment is maintained, as well as other factors that affect biological growth.

Fluidized beds combine the best features of activated sludge and trickling filtration into one
process. Offering a fixed film and a large surface area, fluidized bed systems offer the stability and
ease of operation of the trickling filter as well as the greater operating efficiency of the activated
sludge process.

5 Mass Transfer in Fluidized Beds

There are two types of mass transport important in fluidized-bed operations. The first is the
transport between gas and solid. In some situations this can affect the analysis of fluidized-bed
behavior significantly, and in others it might not enter the calculations at all. In the treatment of
this type of transfer, it will be seen that this type of transport is quite similar to gas-solid mass
transfer in other types of operations.
The second type of mass transfer is unique to fluidized-bed operations. It concerns the transfer of
material between the bubbles and the clouds, and between the clouds and the emulsion (Figures
R12.3-3, R12.3-5, and R12.3-6). In almost every type of fluidized-bed operation, there are
significant gas-phase concentration differences between the various elements of the fluidized bed.
Consequently, calculations involving this type of mass transfer occur in almost every fluidized-
bed analysis.
5.1 Types of Fluidized bed reactor
FBRs can be classified into two types as: –
a. Aerobic FBR, and
b. Anaerobic FBR.
Aerobic FBR is the common type of FBR is available for applications as carbon oxidation and
nitrification, which require oxygen to sustain microbial activities.
Oxygenated FBR and Aerated FBR the common methods of oxygen supply in the process.
Oxygenated FBR

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In an oxygenated FBR, high purity liquid oxygen is used to maximize the transfer and utilization
of oxygen in the reactor. To avoid excessive biofilm detachment from the fluidized media by gas
effervescence, the oxygen is added and dissolved into the wastewater in an external, pressurized
oxygenator prior to FBR treatment. Fluidization of bio particles in an oxygenated FBR is
maintained by recirculation of reactor effluent. This practice also ensures that oxygen is not a rate-
limiting factor by diluting out the feed substrate concentration. Because the expanded bed height
in an oxygenated FBR increases as the bed matures, it is intentionally controlled through
intermittent removal of overgrown particles.
A. Aerated FBR
In this type, the air is directly injected into an aerated FBR through an internal draft tube to promote
oxygenation and mixing. Fluidization of bioparticles in an aerated FBR is concomitantly
maintained by gas effervescence and liquid circulation. Therefore, recirculation of reactor effluent
is not needed..
B. Anaerobic FBR
The Anaerobic FBR is similar in physical design to the aerobic FBR. This FBR is operated at
higher up-flow liquid velocity of about 20 m s-1 to provide about 100% bed expansion. Effluent
recycle is used to provide sufficient up-flow velocity. Reactor depth ranges from 4 to 6 m.
Activated carbon has been used in many Anaerobic FBRs for treating industrial and hazardous
waste streams. The main limitation with activated carbon is the higher cost, but for certain type of
industrial and hazardous waste streams the use of activated carbon is a necessity.
The start-up of Anaerobic FBR must be done with more care than the other types of anaerobic
reactors/ a higher application rate is recommended at first to select for bacteria that more readily
attach to the reactor packing under highly turbulent condition.

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6 Advantages and Disadvantages of Fluidized Bed reactors

Advantages of FBR
FBR has various advantages. Some of them are listed below.
1. As the media on which microorganisms grow is in fluidized state, the surface of the media
available for the development of microorganisms is quite large which leads to high concentration
of microorganisms and thus high flow rate can be achieved in FBR.
2. Because of large concentration of microorganisms, FBR bears high potential for the removal of
various parameters such as BOD, COD, nitrogen, etc.
3. Size of the FBR plant is small as compared to other types of the reactors and hence the space
requirement is less.
4. FBR is capable of accepting shock loads.
5. Treatment by FBR is economical where land cost is high.
6. If FBR is operated properly, there is no need to provide secondary setting tank, which leads to
a saving in the total cost of plant.
7. The system operation is simple and reliable
Disadvantages

Main disadvantage of FBR is the pumping power required to operate and the proper design of
inlet and outlet arrangement for proper distribution of flow.

7 Design Parameters and Criteria for FBR

The development of any anaerobic system needs the evaluation of some optimal conditions
concerning several topics. For fixed film systems this includes especially the choice of the support,
the reactor geometry, the start-up procedure and the handling of excess sludge or

Inert support. The FBR is operated at higher up flow liquid velocities of about 20m/hr. To provide
100 percent bed expansion. Effluent recycle is used to provide sufficient up flow velocity. The
reactor depth ranges from4 to 6m.Besides sand, other packing materials have been considered for
use in FBRs including diatomaceous earth, union and cation exchange resins, and activated carbon.

Solids capture is minimal in the anaerobic FBR due to the high turbulence and thin biofilms
developed. With little solids captured, the process is better suited for waste waters with mainly

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soluble COD. Solids discharged in the effluent from the sloughed biofilm are minimized by biofilm
inventory in the reactor. As biomass accumulates on the FBR packing, the net particle density
decreases and the migrates to the top of the reactor. Periodic removal of these solids can control
biofilm sloughing and minimize effluent TSS concentration. The removed particles are
mechanically processed to separate the biomass from the sand, which is returned to the FBR. For
example; MacDonald, [40] reported the design criteria and evaluated the operating performance
of upflow-expanded bed biofilm reactors for denitrification at Rancho California Wastewater
Reclamation plant (Riverside County, Southern California), which has a design capacity of 23.6
MLD. The reactor is designed for a loading of 3.0 kg of NO3 – N per day per m-3 of expanded
bed volume. The upflow velocity is 0.4 cm s-1 and the reactor has an empty bed contact time of
10 minutes at design flows.

Table 1.Design Criteria for FBR of Rancho California Wastewater Reclamation plant.

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8. Applications of FBR

Fluidized Bed Reactors have been extensively studied in wastewater treatment due to their
advantages such as accumulation of a large amount of biomass on the support media, high
organic loading rates, a high specific surface area, short retention times, and mixing
characteristics. Fluidized Bed Biofilm Reactors can be used for BOD removal, Nitrification
and Denitrification. Aerobic FBBRs are frequently used to treat groundwater contaminated
with hazardous substances. In these applications activated carbon is used for the packing to
provide both carbon adsorption and biological degradation.

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8 REFERENCES
1. Keavins, D. L., ed. Fluidization Technology, vol. I and II. Washington, D.C.:Hemisphere
Publishing Co. in association with McGraw-Hill I(1975), II(1976).
2. Davidson, J. F., and D. L. Keairns, Fluidization. Proceedings of the Second Engineering
Foundation Conference, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
3. Kunii, D., and O. Levenspiel, Fluidization Engineering, 2nd Ed., (Boston: Butterworth, 1991).
4. Pollution Prevention and Abatement: Phosphate Fertilizer Plants, Draft Technical Background
Document, Environment Department, Washington, D.C. World Bank, 1996.
5. Kunii, D. and Levenspiel, O., Fluidization Engineering, 2nd edn., p.431-436,Butterworth-
Heineman, Boston, 1991.
6. Grace, J. R., and J. M. Matsen, Fluidization. New York: Plenum Press, 1980.

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