Conditioning of sewage sludge with electrolysis: Effectiveness and optimizing study to improve dewaterability

The potential benefits of electrolysis-conditioned sludge dewatering treatment were investigated in this paper. Focuses were placed on effectiveness and factors affecting such novel application of electrolysis process. Experiments have demonstrated that a significant improvement of sludge dewaterability evaluated by capillary suction time (CST) could be obtained at a relative low value of electrolysis voltage. A Box-Behnken experimental design based on the response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to evaluate the optimum of the influencing variables. The optimal values for electrolysis voltage, electrode distance and electrolysis time are 21 V, 5 cm and 12 min, respectively, at which the CST reduction efficiency of 18.8 +/- 3.1% could be achieved, this agreed with that predicted by an established polynomial model in this study. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.