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Extracting humic acids from digested sludge by alkaline treatment and ultrafiltration

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Abstract

The concentration of hardly biodegradable humic substances in sludge would relatively increase after anaerobic digestion due to the degradation of other organic substances. Thus, extracting humic substances from digested sludge as a liquid organic fertilizer was tested using alkaline treatment and ultrafiltration, and the dewaterability of the residual sludge was also tested. The results showed that the contents of humic acids and fulvic acids in digested sludge were 16.4 mg/g total solids and 88.9 mg/g total solids, respectively, and most of the humic acids had a molecular weight higher than 50 kDa. Hence, the membrane with a molecular weight cut-off of 50 kDa was used for humic acids recovery from the centrifugation supernatant after alkaline sludge disintegration with an optimum NaOH dose of 0.1 mol/L. Under these conditions, the total concentration of humic acids and fulvic acids was 4239 mg/L in the retention solution, which can be further concentrated and processed for liquid fertilizer. The total recovery rate of sludge humic acids and fulvic acids was about 25 %. The dewatering performance of the residual sludge was better than that of the untreated sludge when the residual sludge was diluted to a water content of 95–98 % and then conditioned with polyacrylamide at a dose of 10–30 mg/L.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the China Major Science and Technology Program for Water Pollution Control and Treatment (No. 2011ZX07317) and the Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51008174).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Microorganism Application and Risk Control of Shenzhen, Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen, 518055, China

    Huan Li, Youkang Li, Shuxin Zou & Chenchen Li

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  1. Huan Li
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  2. Youkang Li
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Correspondence to Huan Li.

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Li, H., Li, Y., Zou, S. et al. Extracting humic acids from digested sludge by alkaline treatment and ultrafiltration. J Mater Cycles Waste Manag 16, 93–100 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10163-013-0153-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10163-013-0153-6

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