Food processing wastewater treatment using black soldier fly larvae

The use of Black Soldier Fly (BSF) larvae has been recently studied as a promising biological treatment process for high organic content wastewater. Being wastewater quality difficult to control, as it may varies dramatically in time and from wastewater generating process to another, artificial wastewater has been mainly used to to better comprehend the treatment process. In this study process performance was investigated in the treatment of real wastewaters from different food-processing industries, such as Bakery, Brewery, Diary, Juice production, Slaughterhouse and Winery. The compatibility of BSF larval process with different food-processing wastewaters was evaluated by measuring both the removal rates of organic substance (mg/day/larva), eventually providing design parameters for real scale treatment plants, and larval growth in terms of wet weight and percentage of prepupation. The feeding substrates were monitored for total organic carbon (TOC), chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5), total Kjeldahl nitrogen (TKN), ammonia and phosphate.