Waste activated sludge treatment based on temperature staged and biologically phased anaerobic digestion system
Jingwen Yu , Mingxia Zheng , Tao Tao , Jiane Zuo , Kaijun Wang
DOI:10.1016/S1001-0742(12)60266-6
Received December 01, 2012,Revised April 01, 2013, Accepted , Available online October 10, 2013
Volume ,2013,Pages 2056-2064
The concept of temperature staged and biological phased (TSBP) was proposed to enhance the performance of waste-activated sludge anaerobic digestion. Semi-continuous experiments were used to investigate the effect of temperature (35 to 70℃) as well as the hydraulic retention time (HRT) (2, 4 and 6 days) on the acidogenic phase. The results showed that the solubilization degree of waste-activated sludge increased from 14.7% to 30.1% with temperature increasing from 35 to 70℃, while the acidification degree was highest at 45℃ (17.6%), and this was quite different from the temperature impact on hydrolysis. Compared with HRT of 2 and 6 days, 4 days was chosen as the appropriate HRT because of its relatively high solubilization degree (24.6%) and acidification degree (20.1%) at 45℃. The TSBP system combined the acidogenic reactor (45℃, 4 days) with the methanogenic reactor (35℃, 16 days) and the results showed 84.8% and 11.4% higher methane yield and volatile solid reduction, respectively, compared with that of the single-stage anaerobic digestion system with HRT of 20 days at 35℃. Moreover, different microbial morphologies were observed in the acidogenic-and methanogenic-phase reactors, which resulted from the temperature control and HRT adjustment. All the above results indicated that 45℃ was the optimum temperature to inhibit the activity of methanogenic bacteria in the acidogenic phase, and temperature staging and phase separation was thus accomplished. The advantages of the TSBP process were also confirmed by a full-scale waste-activated sludge anaerobic digestion project which was an energy self-sufficient system.
