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

纤维素（来源于卫生纸）是生活污水中悬浮物的主要成分，本项目前期工作表明，纤维素具有非常复杂的降解动力学，其降解速度远低于其他典型生活污水中的物质。鉴于这种困难的降解，纤维素是污水处理厂污泥产生的重要贡献者，因此可以成为工厂容量的重要限制因素。通过旋转带式过滤器（RBF）筛分在预处理步骤中去除纤维素显示出巨大的潜力，以提高废水处理系统的性能，同时保持低投资和空间要求。此外，RBF保留的固体可以回收再利用或转化为能源。然而，为了对RBF预处理的正确安装和操作做出决定，需要关于处理厂中纤维素命运的更详细的定性信息，并且需要进一步研究纤维素的特定生物降解动力学。由于缺乏直接测定废水中纤维素浓度的有效分析方法，只能间接研究纤维素的降解和污泥样品。然而，一种新的分析方法，允许直接纤维素测量最近已经开发，从而开辟了新的视角，分析纤维素降解机制。Engage plus项目的目标是将这种新的分析方法与传统的生物降解实验相结合，以便更直接地分析纤维素在降解过程中的命运，以及详细描述传入废水中纤维素含量的特征。降解率和适当的进水分馏的综合知识可以随后用于详细的建模研究，以支持工业合作伙伴在其产品的安装和操作方面的决策（Salsnes RBF）。

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).