Activated sludge is widely used to treat municipal and industrial wastewater globally and the formation of activated sludge flocculates (flocs) underpins the ability to separate sludge from treated water. Despite the importance of activated sludge flocs to human civilization there have been precious few attempts to rationally design fit for purpose flocs using a bottom-up approach based on a so...

The slow degradation rate of sewage sludge in anaerobic digestors is due to the rate limiting step of sludge hydrolysis. The effect of ultrasound pretreatment on sludge degradability was investigated using ultrasound at a frequency of 31 kHz and high acoustic intensities. Ultrasound treatment resulted in raw sludge disintegration as was demonstrated by increase of Chemical Oxygen Demand in the ...

In recent years many researchers show a high interest in co-digestion, simultaneous anaerobic decomposition of a homogenous mixture of at least two biodegradable waste. Anaerobic codigestion is reported to offer several benefits over digestion of separate materials, such as increased cost-efficiency, increased biodegradation of the treated materials, as well as increased biogas production. Most...

Dewatered sludges and biosolids generated from wastewater treatment facilities are known to emit malodorous odors causing public inconvenience. The odors typically comprise of reduced organo sulfur based compounds and nitrogen containing compounds. Lime stabilization is a technique which is commonly used in the wastewater industry to produce biosolids having reduced odors that can be safely lan...

Adding greenery from public spaces to the co-digestion process with sewage sludge was evaluated by shredding experiments and laboratory-scale batch and continuous mesophilic anaerobic fermentation experiments. The ratio of the shredded grass with 20mm or less in length by a commercially available shredder was 93%. The methane production was around 0.2NL/gVS-grass in the batch experiment. The co...

Using internal carbon source contained in waste activated sludge (WAS) is beneficial for nitrogen removal from wastewater with low carbon/nitrogen ratio, but it is usually limited by sludge disintegration. This study presented a novel strategy based on free nitrous acid (FNA) pretreatment to intensify the release of organic matters from WAS for enhanced denitrification. During FNA pretreatment,...

Category 2 animal by-products that need to be sterilized with steam pressure according Regulation (EC) 1774/2002 are studied. In this work, 2 sets of experiments were performed in mesophilic conditions: (i) biomethane potential determination testing 0.5%, 2.0% and 5.0% total solids (TS), using sludge from the anaerobic digester of a wastewater treatment plant as inoculum; (ii) biodegradability ...

A novel co-digestion approach was evaluated to determine if agricultural and industrial waste residues could efficiently degrade straw without pretreatment. Untreated rice straw was co-digested with pig wastewater and anaerobic sludge from the pulp and paper mill treatment process in a pilot-scale digester (1 m) operated in dry, mesophilic conditions. The total weight ratio of dry straw to pig ...

BACKGROUND Biliary sludge is associated with gallbladder (GB) dysmotility and mucus hypersecretion suggesting a link between biliary sludge and the formation of GB mucoceles (GBM). If biliary sludge progresses to GBM, treatment to reduce the production and progression of sludge is warranted. HYPOTHESIS/OBJECTIVES The objective of this study was to determine the course of biliary sludge in dog...