Computational fluid dynamics simulation for an optimal wastewater flow in anaerobic baffled reactor: Effect of water velocity and pipe diameter

Small-scale wastewater treatment technology facility is critically important to be implemented in a developing country. The small-scale is commonly used as decentralized wastewater treatment in Indonesia. This study aims to determine the optimum up-flow velocity in an ABR model using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. The wastewater sample was collected from three different decentralized wastewater treatment plants to assess the type of liquid. Then, the design of experiment (DoE) was composed using Minitab 17. Ansys Fluent 18.1 was used to analyze the CFD simulation to obtain the optimum value of up-flow velocity. In this simulation, the optimum value of the up-flow velocity was referred to as the lowest up-flow velocity that can enhance the biological process of wastewater in an ABR. Moreover., this simulation showed that Vinlet of 4.77 m.hr and pipe diameter of 29 mm produced up-flow velocity of 1.52 × 10−6 m/hr.