ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the kinetics involved in wastewater treatment using the rotating biological contactors (RBC) units. During the Phase I and Phase II studies, the RBC performance was investigated separately under low and high organic loading conditions with the intent to find an optimum organic loading range above which oxygen limiting conditions and zero order kinetics would prevail. However, the use of the RBC process for wastewater treatment declined in the early 80's due to various operational problems and because of structural problems relating to shaft and media failure. A full-scale RBC plant having two parallel trains used to treat industrial and domestic wastewater in a town with a population of 6000 was used. During the higher loadings, the plant loading was increased in an incremental fashion over a period of time by adjusting the degree of pretreatment provided for an industrial waste originating at a dairy plant.
