The evaluation of seeding process of tofu wastewater treatment in anaerobic sequencing batch reactor

Anaerobic process was one of the possible options in the treatment of tofu wastewater by degrading its high organic compound into biogas. An improvement was applied in this research by designing the multi-purposes reactor in one column to run anaerobic digestion of tofu’s wastewater, named Anaerobic Sequencing Batch Reactor (ASBR). The reactor consisted of 4 steps which were the filling process, reaction process, settling process, decantation process and idle. Cow manure was used as the inoculum, the bacteria was being seeded in seeding process as the important starting step of anaerobic process in ASBR. The aim of this research was to increase the concentration of anaerobic bacteria including acidogenic and methanogenic bacteria. The parameters measured during the seeding process were pH, COD, MLVSS, and biogas production volume. The seeding process was run in 25 days resulting in 3,282 mL cumulative biogas production and a high percentage of COD removal, which was 84.61%. The growth of anaerobic bacteria in ASBR was not optimum due to the lack amount of additional nutrition and the acid condition of the reactor.