Advanced technologies for waste treatment

随着全世界对自然资源的需求日益增加，现有技术不足以保护可持续发展；总是需要新技术和更具成本效益的解决方案。城市污水是天然水中污染物的主要来源，因为它们的性质复杂，因为人类排泄物和来自个人和工业活动的各种化学物质。最近，它们也被认为是内分泌干扰物质的来源，需要去除这些物质才能回收和再利用水。同样，废水产生的污泥需要各种处理过程，才能作为最终处置方法应用于农田。这项研究旨在开发新的、具有成本效益的深度处理技术和设计方法，以解决上述一些问题，目标如下：(I)降解和去除自来水厂和自然环境中存在的内分泌干扰物；(Ii)高级氧化在城市污泥预处理中的新应用，以改善厌氧消化过程中污泥的溶解，随后更大的体积减少和稳定，便于将其作为农业土壤处置；以及(Iii)应用计算流体动力学(CFD)高效设计污泥干燥机。这项研究涉及的主要创新包括开发和优化相关处理技术，开发环境化学品降解的动力学和力学模型，设计具有改进的能量分布和高效流体动力学的新型反应器系统，以及开发高效的多相流传热传质CFD模型。此外，拟议的研究将具有长期目标，为环境建模人员和工程师提供环境化合物的反应动力学数据库，并开发高效的综合污泥管理系统。

With the increasing world-wide demand on natural resources, existing technologies are not adequate to protect sustainable development; new technologies and more cost effective solutions are always needed. Municipal waste water effluents are the major source of pollutants in natural water due to their complex nature because of human waste and a variety of chemicals that come from both individual and industrial activities. Lately, they are also recognized to be a source of endocrine disrupting substances, which need to be removed for the reclamation and reuse of water. Similarly, the sludge generated from wastewater requires various treatment processes before it can be applied to agricultural lands as a final disposal method. The proposed research is directed toward developing novel and cost-effective advanced treatment technologies and design approach addressing some of the above issues with the following objectives: (i) degradation and removal of endocrine disruptor compounds present in water works and natural environments, (ii) novel application of advanced oxidation for the pretreatment of municipal sludge to improve solubulization of the sludge during anaerobic digestion and subsequent greater volume reduction and stabilization facilitating its disposal as agricultural soil, and (iii) application of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for efficient design of sludge dryer. The major innovations involved with the proposed research include the development and optimization of the relevant treatment technologies, development of kinetic and mechanistic models of degradation of environmental chemicals, design of novel reactor systems with improved energy distribution and efficient hydrodynamics, and development of efficient CFD models for multiphase flow with heat and mass transfer. In addition, the proposed research will have the long term goals of contributing to the reaction kinetic data base of the environmental compounds for environmental modelers and engineers and develop an efficient integrated sludge management system.