• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.293-298
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• 2014

An anaerobic photosynthetic treatment process utilizing purple non-sulfur photosynthetic bacteria (PNSB) was applied to the recovery of organic carbon from food processing wastewater. PNSB cells, by-product from the treatment, have high nutrition such as proteins and vitamins which are a good alternative for fish feed. Effects of light source on performance of anaerobic photosynthetic process were investigated in this study. Two bench-scale photo-bioreactors were lighted with infrared light emitting diodes (LEDs) and tungsten lamps covered with infrared transmitting filter, respectively, aiming to supply infrared light for photosynthetic bacteria growth. The photo-bioreactors were operated to treat noodle-processing wastewater for 323 days. Hydraulic retention time (HRT) was set as 6 days. Organic removals in the photo-bioreactor lighted with infrared LEDs (91%-95%) was found higher than those in photo-bioreactor with tungsten lamps with filter (79%-83%). Biomass production in a 150 L bench-scale photo-bioreactor was comparable to a 8 L small-scale photo-bioreactor in previous study, due to improvement of light supply efficiency. Application of infrared LEDs could achieve higher treatment performance with advantages in energy efficiency and wavelength specifity.