Development of a Compact, Cost Effective, and Energy Efficient Biofilm Reactor for Wastewater Treatment and Effluent Reuse

The CFIC® (Continuous Flow Intermittent Cleaning) biofilm reactor has been developed. It contains highly packed biofilm carriers to a degree that little movement of the carriers occurs in the reactor during normal operation. The process has continuous inflow to the bioreactor and intermittent cleaning, which removes excess biomass from the biofilm carriers. A large void volume maximizes the run time between cleaning cycles. During cleaning the water level in the reactor is elevated just enough to provide free movement of the carriers. The turbulence in the reactor may temporarily be increased to facilitate removal of biomass, and the biomass will be washed out of the reactor using influent wastewater. The new CFIC® process was tested in parallel with the well-documented MBBR process. The CFIC® process produced lower effluent FCOD and TSS concentrations than the MBBR process, even at higher biofilm surface area loading rates and significantly higher volumetric loading rates.