The CFD modeling in bioreactor tracer studies

This paper presents the effects of dispersion on predicting longitudinal tracer concentration profiles in an activated sludge bioreactor located at the Wschód Waste-Water Treatment Plant in Gdansk. The aim of this study has been to use the one-dimensional advection-dispersion equation to simulate a non-active substance flow (based on the measured tracer concentration). The simulation results were compared with those obtained in the traditional tanks-in-series approach, commonly used in designing biological reactors. The dispersion coefficient was calculated from a statistical formula based on differences in the tracer concentration distributions at two sampling points. The study has shown that the numerical simulation using the one-dimensional tracer migration equation yields better results than the tanks-in-series model in predicting longitudinal tracer concentration profiles. This paper is an in-troduction to the study of reactive substances in activated sludge bioreactors.