Analysis of the Operating Conditions of a Wastewater Treatment Plant to Determine the Influence on the Production Of Bioplastics

In this work, the influence of the operating conditions of an activated sludge reactor of a mixed plant or crop in the accumulation of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) was analyzed. The purpose of this analysis is to identify the optimal conditions with which this type of reactor should operate so that there is a greater accumulation of polyhydroxyalkanoates, the production of these through mixed cultures contributes to the reduction of production costs since they are generated from a renewable substrate and low cost.

In order to achieve this analysis, the GPS-X software was used, which allows us to simulate the entire wastewater treatment process, for this particular case only the influent of the reactor, the activated sludge reactor and the effluent itself are modeled. it allowed us to use different concentrations of organic loading with which various PHA accumulation scenarios were generated, the activated sludge model 3 (ASM3) was defined with which the energy reserve models are described. It is important to remember that polyhydroxyalkanoates accumulate intracellularly in the form of granules under stress conditions, this means that they are limited to a micronutrient such as nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, among others, and require a substrate which allows them to accumulate Energy.

The model used is matrix notation in which 14 variables are involved and 12 processes of heterotrophic and autotrophic bacteria are carried out, this notation generates a differential equation that explains the process and allows us to analyze the desired variable. The concentration of organic matter was analyzed since at a higher concentration of this is the accumulation of polyhydroxyalkanoates, the results obtained for each of the concentrations of organic loading are discussed and a comparison of them is made to better understand how they affect the operating conditions the production of the PHA.