BIOLOGICAL TREATMENT OF WASTE WATER: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH

Recent years have seen a rising interest in biofilters. This is due to the application of new materials for particles in the charge and small energy expenditures. Biological purification before other methods has a number of significant advantages. Microorganisms complete the decomposition of domestic sewage to neutral products (gas and water), while ensuring the circulation of substances in nature. Thus, biological purification, unlike other methods, does not extract and does not transfer contamination to other forms, which ensures practically no-waste production. At the same time, biological methods are less expensive, since, with the exception of capital investments, they almost do not require operating costs. All methods of biological purification are mainly divided into aerobic and anaerobic. In aerobic method, microorganisms use dissolved oxygen in waste water, while in anaerobic process, microorganisms do not have access to oxygen. The further development of the bio-purification technology will be promoted by the elaboration of effective methods for simulating the processes in purifying plants. In the present paper, a model for calculating the bio-purification in a continuous reactor supported by experiments on a laboratory facility is developed. Below, instead of empirical assumptions about the exponential dependence of the decrease in the substrate concentration on the distance from the inlet to a reactor with parameters having no clear physical meaning and determined from experiments, this law is calculated directly with the use of the kinetics and mass transfer.