Sewage sludge management is an energy intensive process. Anaerobic digestion contributes to energy efficiency improvement but is limited by the biological process. A review has been conducted prior to experimentation in order to evaluate the mass and energy balances on anaerobic digestion followed by gasification of digested sludge. The purpose was to improve energy recovery and reuse. Calculat...

Denitrifying phosphorus removal is an attractive wastewater treatment process due to its reduced carbon source demand and sludge minimization potential. Two lab-scale sequencing batch reactors (SBRs) were operated in alternating anaerobic-anoxic (A-A) or anaerobic-oxic (A-O) conditions to achieve denitrifying enhanced biological phosphate removal (EBPR) and traditional EBPR. No significant diff...

The performance of mesophilic anaerobic digesters of four large Italian wastewater treatment plants without primary sedimentation were studied. Only the waste activated sludge is stabilised by means of the mesophilic (35–37 8C) anaerobic digestion process. The anaerobic digesters generally worked with a hydraulic retention time in a range of 20–40 days and an organic loading rate of some 1 kg V...

Six upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactors were concurrently operated for 146 d to examine the effects of calcium on the sludge granulation process during start-up. Introduction of Ca at concentrations from 150 to 300mg/l enhanced the biomass accumulation and granulation process. The calcium concentration in the granules was nearly proportional to the calcium concentration in the feed,...

unless anaerobic reactor and digesters have been applied worldwide, suitable operation is still challenging. threats of facing with low efficiency operationally, their sensitivity and souring phenomenon are part of typical problems. in this article, the application of electrolysis as an upgrading alternative is investigated for the purpose of controlling its capability on effluent quality promo...

Anaerobic digestion is now commonly used for sludge treatment. Most industrial digesters operate under mesophilic (37°C) or thermophilic (55°C) conditions. These two regimes are considered as optimal for methane production. In this work, continuous sludge digestion has been operated at labscale at 5 different temperatures comprised between 28° and 55°C. The reactors were first inoculated with a...

The influence of sludge age on granular sludge formation and microbial population dynamics in a methanol- and acetate-fed aerobic granular sludge system operated at 35°C was investigated. During anaerobic feeding of the reactor, methanol was initially converted to methane by methylotrophic methanogens. These methanogens were able to withstand the relatively long aeration periods. Lowering the a...

Thermal hydrolysis pretreatment coupled with Thermophilic Anaerobic Digestion (TAD) for Waste Activated Sludge (WAS) treatment is a promising combination to improve biodegradation kinetics during stabilization. However, to date there is a limited knowledge of the anaerobic biomass composition and its impact on TAD process performances. In this study, the structure and dynamics of the microbial ...

A study on a pilot plant accomplishing synchronous municipal sewerage-sludge stabilization was conducted at a municipal sewerage treatment plant. Stabilization of sewerage and sludge is achieved in three-step process: anaerobic reactor, roughing filter and a microbial-earthworm-ecofilter. The integrated ecofilter utilizes an artificial ecosystem to degrade and stabilize the sewerage and sludge....

As an important intermediate product, short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) can be generated after hydrolysis and acidification from waste activated sludge, and then can be transformed to methane during anaerobic digestion process. In order to obtain more SCFA and methane, most studies in literatures were centered on enhancing the hydrolysis of sludge anaerobic digestion which was proved as un-effici...