Globally, wastewater treatment plants are under pressure to handle high concentration sludge in a sludge treatment line. Unawareness of the non-Newtonian behaviour of the thickened sludge has the potential to cause unexpected problems when the fluid behaviour changes from turbulent to laminar flow. In this study, sludge apparent viscosity was plotted as a function of total suspended solids conc...

Sewage sludge is an unavoidable secondary pollution produced in the process of sewage treatment. At present traditional methods of treating sludge (e.g. landfill, incineration or land application) have some disadvantages and shortages. Direct thermochemical liquefaction of sludge is a new treatment method, which has the advantage of both treatment and energy recovery. Research progress and appl...

Microbial activity measurements (oxygen transfer rate, OTR, carbon dioxide transfer rate CTR and respiratory quotient, RQ) are used to monitor and control biological processes. In this study, the digestion of activated sludge in microaerobic conditions was evaluated. The changes of biological activity during digestion were monitored by respiration activity. The sludge mixtures used were primary...

An acidophilic, sulfur-oxidizing Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans MET bacterium was isolated from anaerobically digested, dewatered sewage sludge. This bacterium showed sulfur-oxidizing ability at both acidic and neutral conditions, and allowed metal leaching even at a high (130 g L(-1)) sludge solids concentration. We found that low metal leaching efficiency at high solids concentration was mainl...

Effects of different pretreatment methods on sludge dewaterability and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) degradation during petrochemical sludge anaerobic digestion were studied. Results showed that the total biogas production volume in the thermal pretreatment system was 4 and 5 times higher than that in the ultrasound pretreatment and in the control system, and the corresponding volatil...

Sludge drying reed beds have been used for dewatering and mineralization of sludge since the beginning of the 90’s, but their insufficient performances in terms of Dry Matter [DM] content and mineralization of the sludge have made necessary new studies. Therefore, 8 pilots of 2m2 each and a full-scale plant (13 000 p.e , 8 beds of 470m2 in operation for 4 years) have been monitored to examine t...

A novel polyphosphate kinase (PPK) was retrieved from an uncultivated organism in activated sludge carrying out enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR). Acetate-fed laboratory-scale sequencing batch reactors were used to maintain sludge with a high phosphorus content (approximately 11% of the biomass). PCR-based clone libraries of small subunit rRNA genes and fluorescent in situ hybridiza...

Improvement of sludge dewaterability is important for reducing the total costs for the treatment and disposal of sludge in wastewater treatment plants. In this study, we investigate the use of hydrogen peroxide as an oxidizing reagent for the conditioning of waste activated sludge. Significant improvement to sludge dewaterability was attained after the addition of hydrogen peroxide at 30 mg/g T...

BACKGROUND Antimicrobial resistance is a serious threat in veterinary medicine and human healthcare. Resistance genes can spread from animals, through the food-chain, and back to humans. Sewage sludge may act as the link back from humans to animals. The main aims of this study were to investigate the occurrence of vancomycin resistant enterococci (VRE) in treated sewage sludge, in a Swedish was...

This work deals with the development of a digital image analysis procedure to characterize microbial flocs obtained in three different WWTP: a bench-scale Sequencing Batch Reactor (SBR) dealing with phenol and nitrogen biological removal, a municipal treatment unit (Ilha do Governador, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and an industrial wastewater treatment plant (Ciba – Estrada do Colégio, Rio de Janeir...