Comparison of long-term energy efficiency and microbial community dynamics of different reactors in response to increased loadings of water hyacinth juice.

Water hyacinth is considered to be among the worst invasive weed species globally, causing detrimental environmental and social problems worldwide. It rapidly grows, and therefore has significant potential as a resource. Due to its high moisture content (approximately 95%), the by-product obtained by dehydrating water hyacinth yields a considerable amount of water hyacinth juice (WHJ).

Novel start-up process for the efficient degradation of high COD wastewater with up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket technology and a modified internal circulation reactor.

To avoid wastage of water resources and operating cost increases caused by the traditional start-up process of large amounts of dilution influent chemical oxygen demand (COD), a novel start-up process (NSP) was developed and verified with water hyacinth juice (WHJ) on an up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) and modified internal circulation (MIC) reactor. Results show that UASB and MIC reactors were started successfully and that the MIC reactor exhibited a superior performance. The NSP time of the MIC reactor (46 days) was less than that of the UASB reactor (52 days), although the start-up organic loading rate (OLR) of the MIC reactor was higher than that of the UASB reactor.