Effects of Thermal Pretreatment and Trace Metal Supplementation on High-Rate Thermophilic Anaerobic Digestion of Municipal Sludge
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 144, Issue 3
Abstract
This study involves high-rate thermophilic anaerobic digestion of sewage sludge at 10 days hydraulic retention time by using thermal pretreatment (170°C and 1 h) of the waste-activated sludge portion in influent sludge and trace metal supplementation (0.49 mg Ni and 0.54 mg Co per liter of influent). The thermal pretreatment not only increased destruction of volatile solids (VS) and volatile suspended solids (VSS) by 6 and 9%, respectively, but also much improved dewaterability of the digested sludge. The trace metal supplementation showed limited effect on the overall performance, except for reduced volatile fatty acid concentrations in the digested sludge. The diffusive gradients in thin-films (DGT) technique was applied to estimate bioavailability of the trace metals in digested sludge filtrates. The DGT analysis suggests that 70–88% () of soluble Ni and only 5–10% () of soluble Co were present in a bioavailable form.
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Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Dr. R. E. Speece, a professor emeritus of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee for his valuable comments on the original manuscript. Thanks are also extended to Dr. H. Zhang of DGT Research, Lancaster, Lancashire, United Kingdom, for kindly offering the DGT samplers. Part of this study was supported by a grant-in-aid to support private universities building up their foundations of strategic research from Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan.
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Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 144 • Issue 3 • March 2018
Copyright
©2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 16, 2017
Accepted: Sep 8, 2017
Published online: Jan 12, 2018
Published in print: Mar 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Jun 12, 2018
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