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Sludge minimisation technologies

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Abstract

The treatment and disposal of excess sludge represents a bottleneck of wastewater treatment plants all over the world, due to environmental, economic, social and legal factors. There is therefore a growing interest in developing technologies to reduce the wastewater sludge generation. The goal of this paper is to present the state-of-the-art of current minimisation techniques for reducing sludge production in biological wastewater treatment processes. An overview of the main technologies is given considering three different strategies: The first option is to reduce the production of sludge by introducing in the wastewater treatment stage additional stages with a lower cellular yield coefficient compared to the one corresponding to the activated sludge process (lysis-cryptic growth, uncoupling and maintenance metabolism, predation on bacteria, anaerobic treatment). The second choice is to act on the sludge stage. As anaerobic digestion is the main process in sewage sludge treatment for reducing and stabilising the organic solids, two possibilities can be considered: introducing a pre-treatment process before the anaerobic reaction (physical, chemical or biological pre-treatments), or modifying the digestion configuration (two-stage and temperature-phased anaerobic digestion, anoxic gas flotation). And, finally, the last minimisation strategy is the removal of the sludge generated in the activated sludge plant (incineration, gasification, pyrolysis, wet air oxidation, supercritical water oxidation).

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Abbreviations

ABR:

anaerobic baffled reactors

AGF:

anoxic gas flotation

ANANOX:

anaerobic anoxic oxic

COD:

chemical oxygen demand

DO:

dissolved oxygen

DS:

dry solids

EGSB:

expanded granular sludge bed

EU:

European Union

HRT:

hydraulic residence time

MLSS (MLVSS):

mixed-liquor (volatile) suspended solids

OSA:

oxic settling anaerobic

SCWO:

supercritical water oxidation

SRT:

solids retention time

SS:

suspended solids

SVI:

sludge volumetric index

THM:

trihalomethanes

TOC:

total organic carbon

TS:

total solids

UASB:

upflow anaerobic sludge blanket

VS (VSS):

volatile (suspended) solids

WAO:

wet air oxidation

WWTP:

wastewater treatment plant

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  1. Department of Chemical Engineering and Environmental Technology, University of Valladolid, Prado de la Magdalena s/n, 47011, Valladolid, Spain

    S. I. Pérez-Elvira, P. Nieto Diez & F. Fdz-Polanco

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  1. S. I. Pérez-Elvira
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  2. P. Nieto Diez
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  3. F. Fdz-Polanco
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Pérez-Elvira, S.I., Nieto Diez, P. & Fdz-Polanco, F. Sludge minimisation technologies. Rev Environ Sci Biotechnol 5, 375–398 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11157-005-5728-9

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