The ClearCycle™ process is use to treat dilute industrial waste containing both slowly degradable and rapidly degrading constituents. The factor limiting the performance of any retained biomass process is the accumulation of organic and inorganic solids within the digester. Since all retained biomass processes accumulate inorganic and slowly hydrolyzed organic materials, a certain portion of the reactor contents must be wasted daily to maintain manageable solids concentrations in the digester. Unfortunately, wasting inorganic and slowly degrading organic solids results in the unnecessary loss of beneficial biomass.

The best approach is to remove only the inorganic solids in a separate waste stream using existing technology while further reducing the slowly degrading organic solids in a separate high solids concentration holding reactor. To overcome the adverse consequences of accumulating inorganic and slowly degrading organic materials in the anaerobic reactor we developed the ClearCycle™ process which uses two smaller anaerobic reactors with an intermediate separator of any type. The total tank volume is minimized.

The degradation of particulate matter is accomplished in two reactors. The rapidly assimilated materials are degraded in a low retention time, low solids concentration, reactor. The slowly degraded solids are reduced in a high solids concentration reactor over a prolonged period of time. Since only dilute solids are thickened, chemical use is minimized. The ClearCycle™ process can be used with an AGF separator or any other separator to treat mixed organic waste containing constituents with different hydrolysis rates. The process is independent of the volume treated. The process design is based solely on organic loading. The process has been successfully demonstrated treating two different potato wastes over a 12 month period.

The above process is patented and trademarked.