Application of anaerobic fluidized bed reactors in wastewater treatment: a review

During the past ten years, anaerobic process has become a popular technology for treating concentrated effluents. Research and development programmes led by both engineers and microbiologists have resulted in a better understanding of the microbiology of anaerobic reactions and reactor design for anaerobic processes. Considerable progress has been achieved in the development of high rate anaerobic reactors with several configurations for treating concentrated industrial effluents. In this review, attention is paid to highlighting the conceptual and full scale developments of anaerobic fluidized bed reactors, in respect of process performance, design concepts, start‐up of the reactor, stability of the system with respect to various operating parameters, reactor configurations, comparison with competing reactor designs for concentrated industrial effluents and kinetics and modelling of reactor systems.