Sewage sludge
Sewage sludge
Sources of sludge
Coarse primary solids and secondary biosolids accumulated in a wastewater treatment process must be treated and disposed of in a safe and effective manner. This material may be inadvertently contaminated with toxic organic and inorganic compounds
Digestion
Many sludges are treated using a variety of digestion techniques, the purpose of which is to reduce the amount of organic matter and the number of disease-causingmicroorganisms present in the solids. The most common treatment options include anaerobic digestion, aerobic digestion, and composting.
[edit]Anaerobic digestion
Anaerobic digestion is a bacterial process that is carried out in the absence of oxygen. The process can either be thermophilic digestion in which sludge is fermented in tanks at a temperature of 55°C or mesophilic, at a temperature of around 36°C. Though allowing shorter retention time, thus smaller tanks, thermophilic digestion is more expensive in terms of energy consumption for heating the sludge.
Anaerobic digestion generates biogas with a high proportion of methane that may be used to both heat the tank and run engines or microturbines for other on-site processes. In large treatment plants sufficient energy can be generated in this way to produce more electricity than the machines require. The methane generation is a key advantage of the anaerobic process. Its key disadvantage is the long time required for the process (up to 30 days) and the high capital cost.
Under laboratory conditions it is possible to directly generate useful amounts of electricity from organic sludge using naturally occurring electrochemically active bacteria[citation needed]. Potentially, this technique could lead to an ecologically positive form of power generation, but in order to be effective such a microbial fuel cell must maximize the contact area between the effluent and the bacteria-coated anode surface, which could severely hamper throughput.
For the Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket treatment see UASB.
[edit]Aerobic digestion
Aerobic digestion is a bacterial process occurring in the presence of oxygen. Under aerobic conditions, bacteria rapidly consume organic matter and convert it into carbon dioxide. Once there is a lack of organic matter, bacteria die and are used as food by other bacteria. This stage of the process is known as endogenous respiration. Solids reduction occurs in this phase. Because the aerobic digestion occurs much faster than anaerobic digestion, the capital costs of aerobic digestion are lower. However, the operating costs are characteristically much greater for aerobic digestion because of energy costs for aeration needed to add oxygen to the process.
[edit]Composting
Composting is also an aerobic process that involves mixing the wastewater solids with sources of carbon such as sawdust, straw or wood chips. In the presence of oxygen, bacteria digest both the wastewater solids and the added carbon source and, in doing so, produce a large amount of heat.
Both anaerobic and aerobic digestion processes can result in the destruction of disease-causing microorganisms and parasites to a sufficient level to allow the resulting digested solids to be safely applied to land used as a soil amendment material (with similar benefits to peat) or used for agriculture as a fertilizer provided that levels of toxic constituents are sufficiently low.
The largest composting site in the world that also processes sewage is the Edmonton Composting Facility, in Edmonton, Canada.
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