Increasing wastewater treatment plant capacity by cellulose recovery with a rotating belt filter : lab and plant-wide modelling studies

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Cellulose (originating from toilet paper) makes up a large part of the suspended solids in domestic wastewater.Previous work within this project has shown that cellulose has a very complex degradation kinetics which ismuch slower than other compounds in typical domestic wastewaters. Given this difficult degradation, celluloseis an important contributor to sludge production in wastewater treatment plants and can as such present animportant limiting factor on a plant's capacity. Removal of cellulose in a pre-treatment step by sieving with aRotating Belt Filter (RBF) shows great potential to increase the performance of wastewater treatment systemswhile keeping investment and space requirements low. Moreover, the solids that are retained by the RBF canbe recovered for either reuse or conversion to energy. However, in order to make decisions on properinstallation and operation of an RBF pre-treatment, more detailed, qualitative information on the fate ofcellulose in a treatment plant is needed and the specific biodegradation dynamics of cellulose need to beinvestigated further.So far, cellulose degradation could only be investigated in an indirect way due to the lack of a valid analysismethod to directly measure the concentration of cellulose in wastewater and sludge samples. However, a newanalysis method allowing for direct cellulose measurements has recently been developed thus opening up newperspectives for the analysis of the cellulose degradation mechanism. It is the goal of the Engage plus project tocombine this novel analysis method with traditional biodegradation experiments for a more direct analysis ofthe fate of cellulose during its degradation as well as detailed characterisation of the cellulose content inincoming wastewater. The combined knowledge of degradation rate and proper influent fractionation cansubsequently be used in a detailed modelling study to support the industrial partner in decision makingregarding the installation and operation of their product (a Salsnes RBF).