Effectiveness of dairy wastewater treatment in a bioreactor based on the integrated technology of activated sludge and hydrophyte system

The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of dairy wastewater treatment in the integrated technology based on the simultaneous use of the activated sludge method (AS) and a hydrophyte system (HS) (AS-HS), in this case, common reed (Phragmites australis) or common cattail (Typha latifolia). Experiments were conducted in an innovative reactor exploited in the fractional-technical scale at the loads of 0.05mg BOD5/mg(.d.m.) d (biochemical oxygen demand) and 0.10mg BOD5/mg(.d.m) d. The AS-HS enabled improving the removal effectiveness of biogenes characterized by concentrations of N-tot., N-NH4 and P-tot.. In contrast, the integrated system had no significant reducing effect either on concentrations of organic compounds characterized by BOD5 and chemical oxygen demand parameters or on the structure of AS in the sequencing batch-type reactors.