For the paper industry, the disposal and management of the yielded sludge are a considerable challenge. In our work, the paper mill sludge-derived magnetically separable heterogeneous catalyst (PMS-Fe-380) was prepared easily through a facile synthesis method. The morphology and structure of PMS-Fe-380 were fully characterized by means of X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectrosco...

Six upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactors were concurrently operated for 146 d to examine the effects of calcium on the sludge granulation process during start-up. Introduction of Ca at concentrations from 150 to 300mg/l enhanced the biomass accumulation and granulation process. The calcium concentration in the granules was nearly proportional to the calcium concentration in the feed,...

Qualitative and quantitative changes of microbial communities in soil microcosms during bioremediation were determined throughout one year. The soil was contaminated with 0%, 2.5%, 5%, 10% (wt/wt) of petrochemical sludge containing polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons. We analyzed the hydrocarbon concentration in the microcosms, the number of cultivable bacteria using CFU and most probable number ...

A new process which attains both excess sludge reduction and phosphorus recovery has been developed. In this paper, characteristics of sludge solubilization by ozone were investigated in batch experiments with sludge taken from an A/O reactor supplied with synthetic sewage and several real wastewater treatment plants. Then, performance of the new developed process was investigated in a laborato...

The anaerobic hybrid reactor consisting of sludge and packed zones was operated with organic pollutant loading rates from 6.2 to 8.2 g COD/L day, composed mainly of suspended solids (SS) and oil and grease (O&G) concentrations between 5.2 to 10.2 and 0.9 to 1.9 g/L, respectively. The overall process performance in terms of chemical oxygen demands (COD), SS, and O&G removals was 73, 63, and 56%,...

The control of activated sludge treatment plants depends on on-line and laboratory measurements. Even though the behavior of activated sludge is basically known, long lags and the complex characteristic of biological activity set a challenge for controlling the process. In this paper MultiLayer Perceptron (MLP) neural network is applied for modelling Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) concentration, ...

Calcium is essential to the growth of several strains of microorganisms involved in anaerobic digestion. It has also been found to be effective in speeding up granulation of anaerobic sludges. But there are reports that the metal can exert a harmful effect on the performance of upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor by causing the ‘cementing’ of some of the active sludge in the reactor,...

In this work, proteins in extracellular polymeric substances extracted from anaerobic, anoxic and aerobic sludges of wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) were analyzed to probe their origins and functions. Extracellular proteins in WWTP sludges were identified using shotgun proteomics, and 130, 108 and 114 proteins in anaerobic, anoxic and aerobic samples were classified, respectively. Most protei...

Wastewater treatment with activated sludge is the most common way of treating wastewater. The process relies on bacteria converting nutrients, BOD and COD into biomass, CO2 and N2. Even though the configuration of activated sludge processes and wastewater treatment plants varies there are common problems which are shared. Filamentous bulking sludge is one problem that is widespread and disturbs...