Continuous flow granular reactors to treat freshwater aquaculture effluents

Abstract

Aquaculture activities had been raising in recent years and nowadays represent more than 50 % of the total fish produced. However, the implementation of freshwater aquaculture activities had associated high water demand making necessary the development of new technologies to reuse their effluents. In this thesis, it was explored a technological solution based on aerobic granular sludge process to treat and reuse large flows of extremely low-concentrated aquaculture streams. It was achieved successful granulation and highquality effluents (in terms of ammonium, nitrite and dissolved oxygen concentrations) in continuous flow reactors at laboratory and pilot scale. This knowledge can help to optimise and improve the water availability of aquaculture facilities.