Novel Modular Treatment System for Distributed Energy Recovery and Water Reclamation from Industrial Wastewaters

Food and beverage industries, such as breweries, discharge wastewater with high organic carbon content; the use of centralized treatment facilities to aerobically manage this wastewater is expensive and energy intensive. Industrial onsite anaerobic treatment systems could improve the management of wastewater and provide opportunities for energy generation and resource recovery. We have developed a two-stage system using encapsulated microorganisms for decentralized anaerobic treatment of brewery wastewater. We hypothesized that a single mixed microbial seed community could be encapsulated for reliable 1st (fermentative)- or 2nd (methanogenic)-stage treatment. Our research goal was to develop a robust, flexible, and reliable community by (i) adapting fermenting and methanogenic communities to several target wastewaters; (ii) characterizing the communities and identifying key members; and (iii) assembling and encapsulating these communities for flexible treatment of a variety of feeds. Results showed that the fermenting communities evolved after adaptation to different feeds while the methanogenic communities remained static.