Pre-oxidation of biosolids to enhance anaerobic digestability

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Disposal of waste sludge is a major economical factor in operation of wastewater treatment plants. Sludge or biosolids processing and management costs account for 50%-60% of the overall wastewater treatment costs. Anaerobic digestion, which is the most widely used sludge stabilization process worldwide, breaks down about 40-50% of the organic matter of the sludge to form valuable biogas (methane) and to reduce pathogen content of the sludge prior to disposal. A disadvantage of the traditional digestion process is the slow sludge hydrolysis rate requiring large volume digesters. The proposed research will address this by introducing oxidative pretreatment of the sludge. Various combinations of advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) that are known as in-situ producers of hydroxyl radicals in practical quantities will be used for biosolids pretreatment. The objective of this project is to determine optimum sludge pretreatment conditions that will reduce the volume of anaerobic digesters with additional benefits such as higher biogas production, control of hydrogen sulfide and odor in the biogas, reduced scaling due to struvite and/or vivianite precipitation, improved dewaterability of sludge and enhanced sludge stabilization with respect to both complex organic compounds such as endocrine disruptive compounds (EDC) and pathogens.