Effect of internal recirculation velocity in an anaerobic sequencing batch reactor (ASBR)

This paper discusses the effect of different internal recirculation velocities on the mixture and shear stress on the flocs in an anaerobic sequencing batch reactor (ASBR). Thus, simulations are performed using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool to evaluate this dependency. The analysis of velocities and turbulent kinetic energy indicates that the highest flow evaluated (0.003 m³/s) results in better mixing within the reactor. However, care must be taken with the recycling pipe size, in order to maintain the shear stress inside the range of optimal values.