Abstract:Early-warning of compartmentalized anaerobic reactor (CAR) was investigated in lab-scale. The performance stability of CAR at high loading rate was worse than that at common loading rate. At high loading rate, the fluctuation of effluent chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentration and volatile fatty acids (VFA) concentration was larger than that of influent COD concentration. The average relative standard deviation of effluent COD concentration and VFA concentration was 32.95% and 40.46% respectively, while that of influent COD concentration was 8.08%. The saturation of volumetric loading rate (SVLR) and VFA (SVFA) could be used to alarm the performance of anaerobic reactors. The working performance was good when the CAR was operated at normal organic loading rate (OLR), in which SVLR and SVFA were below 0.89 and 0.40 respectively. The fluctuation of performance became larger when the CAR was operated at OLR near saturation, in which SVLR and SVFA were close to 1. The performance of CAR was deteriorated when the SVLR and SVFA were more than 1.