manufacturing, and cheese are used for comparison
with the results in Table 3. A brief discussion is done
on each coefficient.
Maximum rate of substrate utilization (k)
k is the maximum rate of substrate utilization per unit
mass of microorganisms. The value of k in this study
came out to be 4.46 day 1
based on sBOD. The
value of k for domestic wastewater is 5 g bsCOD
(g VSS)
1
day 1
and the value of k for cheese
processing wastewater is 9.3 day 1
, showing that the
maximum rate of substrate utilization is slightly less
in the case of dairy-industry wastewater as compared
to domestic and cheese processing wastewaters. The
possible deviation may be due to the difference in the
composition of the two wastewaters. As a matter of
fact, the k value affects the volume of the reactor. The
greater the value of k, the smaller will be the size of
the reactor
11
.