Activated Sludge Process Modification for Sludge Yield Reduction Using Pulp and Paper Wastewater
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 132, Issue 9
Abstract
Implications of conventional activated sludge (CAS) process modification to a low sludge production (LSP) process have been studied for treating pulp and paper wastewaters. The activated sludge process is modified to a two-stage design to establish a microbial food chain that would result in reduced sludge production. The return activated sludge in the LSP process bypasses the first (dispersed growth) stage to be received only by the second (predatory) stage. The resulting once-through operation of the dispersed growth (DG) stage makes it potentially susceptible to bacterial washout under hydraulic shock conditions. A sensitivity analysis of the DG stage operation was performed by varying its hydraulic residence time. The experimental data revealed that the optimal DG stage hydraulic residence is between 3 and , with bacterial washout likely to be initiated within . Based on laboratory results, it appears that a well-designed LSP system is likely to be able to handle day-to-day variations in hydraulic and organic loading rates. The LSP process produced 36% less sludge than the CAS process while consuming approximately 25% more oxygen. The treatment performance of the two systems was comparable except that the LSP sludge had much better settling and dewatering properties.
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Acknowledgments
The writers would like to thank Sylvain Fauteux for skillfully performing the experiments, Mike Paleologou (Paprican) for completing internal review, and the anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Environmental Engineering for peer reviewing the manuscript.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 132 • Issue 9 • September 2006
Pages: 1019 - 1027
Copyright
© 2006 ASCE.
History
Received: Feb 24, 2005
Accepted: Feb 9, 2006
Published online: Sep 1, 2006
Published in print: Sep 2006
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