Journal
WATER RESEARCH
Volume 45, Issue 9, Pages 2822-2834Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.watres.2011.02.032
Keywords
Sludge pretreatment; Microwaves; Anaerobic digestion; Thermophilic; Mesophilic; Two-stage digestion
Funding
- FCT (Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia), Portugal [SFRH/BD/18870/2004]
- Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [SFRH/BD/18870/2004] Funding Source: FCT
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The effects of microwave (MW) pretreatment, staging and digestion temperature on anaerobic digestion were investigated in a setup of ten reactors. A mesophilic reactor was used as a control. Its performance was compared to single-stage mesophilic and thermophilic reactors treating pretreated and non-pretreated sludge, temperature-phased (TPAD) thermophilic-mesophilic reactors treating pretreated and non-pretreated sludge and thermophilic thermophilic reactors also treating pretreated and non-pretreated sludge. Four different sludge retention times (SRTs) (20, 15, 10 and 5 d) were tested for all reactors. Two-stage thermo thermo reactors treating pretreated sludge produced more biogas than all other reactors and removed more volatile solids. Maximum volatile solids (VS) removal was 53.1% at an SRI of 15 d and maximum biogas increase relative to control was 106% at the shortest SRI tested. Both the maximum VS removal and biogas relative increase were measured for a system with thermophilic acidogenic reactor and thermophilic methanogenic reactor. All the two-stage systems treating microwaved sludge produced sludge free of pathogen indicator bacteria, at all tested conditions even at a total system SRI of only 5 d. MW pretreatment and staging reactors allowed the application of very short SRT (5 d) with no significant decrease in performance in terms of VS removal in comparison with the control reactor. MW pretreatment caused the solubilization of organic material in sludge but also allowed more extensive hydrolysis of organic material in downstream reactors. The association of MW pretreatment and thermophilic operation improves dewaterability of digested sludge. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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