Several techniques of sewage treatment, from the most sophisticated to the simplest processes, are known in Brazil. An economically viable alternative for the systems of treatment of sanitary sewage is the anaerobic process, which has been given special attention in Brazilian research programs, mainly in the field of high rate anaerobic reactors as they are compact units and have high efficiency. The use of baffled anaerobic/aerobic reactors is one technological solution to provide the necessary variations in environmental conditions to foster the processes mentioned. In this paper an alternative is presented in the form of a baffled anaerobic/aerobic reactor to treat sanitary sewage in small urban and rural communities. The system performance was evaluated at several hydraulic detention times (HDT). The best values of chemical oxygen demand (CODtotal) - 73.7% and total suspended solids (TSS) removal - 78.8% were obtained for HDTtotal of 8 h (4 h for the anaerobic phase and 4 h for the aerobic phase). The baffled reactor presented good operational stability, a necessary feature of low cost systems.
baffled reactor; anaerobic/aerobic process; low cost systems; rural communities
