Periodic anaerobic baffled reactor (PABR) is a novel reactor based on the design concept of anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR).Residence time distribution (RTD) studies on both clean and working reactors at the same hydraulic residence time (HRT) of 2 d were carried out to investigate the dead spaces and mixing patterns in PABRs at different organic loading rates (OLRs) in various switching manners and frequencies. The results showed that the fraction of dead space in PABR was similar to that in ABR, which was low in comparison with other reactor designs. Dead space may be divided into two categories, hydraulic and biological. In RTD studies without biomass, the hydraulic dead space in the PABR run in an "every second" switching manner with T = 2 d was the lowest whereas that in the PABR run in a T = ∞ (ABR) switching manner was the highest. The same trend was obtained with the total dead space in RTD studies with biomass no matter what the OLR was. Biological dead space was the major contributor to dead space but affected decreasingly at higher OLR whichever switching manner the PABR run in. The flow patterns within the PABRs were intermediate between plug-flow and perfectly mixed under all the conditions tested.