In recent years, a great deal of attention has been focused on the research of activated sludge processes, where the solid-liquid separation phase is frequently considered of critical importance, due to the different problems that severely affect the compaction and the settling of the sludge. Bearing that in mind, in this work, image analysis routines were developed in Matlab environment, allow...

This study assesses teh potential of activated carbon prepared from sewage sludge for nickel ions adsorption from aqueous solutions. Activated carbon physicochemical properties were determined. Batch adsorption experiments were performed as a function of pH solution, adsorbent dose, initial metal ions concentration, contact time and temperature. Teh experimental data were analyzed by teh La...

The objective of this work was to assess the impact of filamentous bacteria on the settling velocity and rheological behaviour of activated sludge. We then identified the relevant settling and rheological model parameters to account for the impact of filamentous bulking on the prediction of sludge mixing and transport in secondary settling tanks by a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. We...

The objective of this paper is to complement the effluent quality (EQI) and operational cost (OCI) indices used to evaluate (plant-wide) control strategies in wastewater treatment systems with a new dimension dealing with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The GHG evaluation is based on a set of comprehensive dynamic models that estimate the most significant potential on-site (secondary and sludge...

We present a CFD model that predicts the sedimentation of activated sludge in a full-scale circular secondary clarifier that is equipped with a suction-lift sludge removal system. The axisymmetric single-phase model is developed using the general-purpose CFD solver FLUENT 6, which uses the finite-volume method. A convection-diffusion equation, which is extended to incorporate the sedimentation ...

This study compared membrane fouling in a sponge-submerged membrane bioreactor (SSMBR) and a conventional membrane bioreactor (CMBR) based on sludge properties when treating synthetic domestic wastewater. In the CMBR, soluble microbial products (SMP) in activated sludge were a major contributor for initial membrane fouling and presented higher concentration in membrane cake layer. Afterwards, m...

We studied and quantified the elimination of sunflower oil from a wastewater influent using a biological treatment by activated sludge. Estimation of the biodegraded material was obtained doing a mass balance, and we conducted a follow-up of the different operational parameters and design. We delivered information about the operation of a system for treatment by activated sludge fed with an inf...

The treatment of paper mill effluent for COD, TOC, total phenols and color removal was investigated using combined activated sludge-ozonation processes and single processes. The combined activated sludge-O3/pH 10 treatment was able to remove around 80% of COD, TOC and color from Kraft E(1) effluent. For the total phenols, the efficiency removal was around 70%. The ozonation post treatment carri...