Activated sludge systems are biological processes greatly used in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). These systems are composed of an aerated tank where the biochemical phase occurs and a settler where the physical phase takes place. Solid-liquid separation is one of the most critical steps in activated sludge processes. This stage presents three main objectives: sludge thickening, effluent c...

A comprehensive study of the ecophysiology of the filamentous Meganema perideroedes affiliated to the Alphaproteobacteria, possessing a "Nostocoida limicola Type II" filamentous morphology was conducted. This morphotype often causes serious bulking problems in activated sludge wastewater treatment plants, and hardly anything is known about its physiology. The study was carried out by applying a...

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...

Vegetable oil–based cutting fluids are a relatively recent development in large-scale metal machining. A metal machining factory in Wales that switched from mineral oil-based to vegetable oil-based cutting fluids has experienced the occurrence of a problematic floating sludge within the settling and holding tanks at the on-site effluent treatment plant. Physicochemical analyses have found that ...

Scales and sludge are commonly formed during oil and gas extracting and processing operations. They usually appear when injection and formation water with different chemical characteristics come into contact. When the produced water is brought to the surface alongside with the oil, a precipitate can be deposited on the walls of pipes and equipment, forming the so-called scales. Otherwise they c...

More stringent controls on the quality of wastewater discharges have given rise to increasing volumes of sewage sludge for disposal, principally to land, using either land-spreading or sludge-to-landfill operations. Current sludge-to-landfill methods generally involve mixing the concentrated sludge with other solid waste in municipal landfills. However, stricter waste disposal legislation and h...

The macromolecular composition of activated sludge (lipids, intracellular proteins and intracellular polysaccharides) was studied together with its capacity to store macromolecules such as polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) in a conventional activated sludge system fed with synthetic sewage water at an organic load rate of 1.0 kg COD/(m(3)·d), varying the dissolved oxygen (DO) and temperature. Six DO co...

Two porous ceramic carriers (internal active surface 0.04 m2 for carrier I and 0.2 m2 for carrier II) with immobilized activated sludge were the stationary filling of the reactors. Municipal wastewater was treated at hydraulic retention time (HRT) from 70 to 15 min. The efficiency of organic compounds removal from wastewater changed for reactor I from 85.2 to 93.8%, for reactor II from 62.9 to ...

The effect of biodegradation on the consolidation characteristics of an anaerobically digested, dewatered municipal sewage sludge was studied. Maintained-load oedometer consolidation tests that included measurement of the pore fluid pressure response were conducted on moderately degraded sludge material and saturated bulk samples that had been stored under static conditions and allowed to anaer...