Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor with Activated Sludge Recycle

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This Demonstration considers a model for the dynamics of a continuous stirred aeration tank processing activated sludge.
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Contributed by: R. Ricardo Sánchez (August 2022)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
Snapshots
Details
The volumetric flow rate entering and leaving the reactor is the sum of the influent
and recycle flow
rates:
.
The recycle ratio is defined by:
.
Then:
.
The reactor residence time is defined as the volume of the reactor divided by the volumetric influent flow rate:
.
The concentration factor is defined as the ratio of the recycle biomass to effluent biomass concentrations:
.
Notation:
: biomass concentration in reactor (
),
: substrate concentration (
),
: sludge concentration factor (dimensionless),
: recycle ratio (dimensionless).
The model is described in detail in [1, Exercise 3.3.2].
Suggestions for further exploration:
1. Vary the recycle ratio to see how the performance of the process is influenced.
2. Vary the values of the flow rate to see how the process is influenced.
Reference
[1] J. B. Snape, I. J. Dunn, J. Ingham and J. E. Prenosil, Dynamics of Environmental Bioprocesses: Modelling and Simulation, New York: VCH, 1995.
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