Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the hydraulic retention time (HRT) and organic loading rate (OLR) on microbial characteristics and treatment efficiency in sewage treatment using aerated submerged biological filter (ASBF) reactor. This reactor combines biodegradation of organic substrates by fixed biomass with a physical separation of biomass by filtration in a single reactor. Both simulated wastewater and domestic wastewater were used as feed solutions. The experimental conditions were a temperature of 17 to $27^{\circ}C$, a hydraulic retention time of 1 to 9hr, an organic loading rate of 0.47 to $3.84kg\;BOD/m^3{\cdot}day$ in ASBF reactor. This equipment could obtain a stable effluent quality in spite of high variation of influent loading rate. Total biomass concentration. biofilm thickness and biofilm mass increased an exponential function according to the increasing OLR. The relationships between water content and biofilm density were in inverse proportion. The percentage of backwash water to influent flow was almost 9%. The separation efficiency of biomass was the percentage of 91 to 92 in ASBF reactor. The sludge production rates in feed solutions of simulated wastewater and domestic wastewater were 0.14~0.26 kg VSS/kg BODrem, 0.43~0.48 kg VSS/kg BODrem, respectively.