Improvement of anaerobic digestion of sewage sludge in a wastewater treatment plant by means of mechanical and thermal pre-treatments: Performance, energy and economical assessment
- Ruffino, Barbara
- Campo, Giuseppe
- Genon, Giuseppe
- Lorenzi, E.
- Novarino, Daniel
- Scibilia, Gerardo
- Zanetti, Mariachiara
DOIAbstract
Performances of mechanical and low-temperature (<100°C) thermal pre-treatments were investigated to improve the present efficiency of anaerobic digestion (AD) carried out on waste activated sludge (WAS) in the largest Italian wastewater treatment plant (2,300,000 p.e.). Thermal pre-treatments returned disintegration rates of one order of magnitude higher than mechanical ones (about 25% vs. 1.5%). The methane specific production increased by 21% and 31%, with respect to untreated samples, for treatment conditions of respectively 70 and 90°C, 3h. Thermal pre-treatments also decreased WAS viscosity. Preliminary energy and economic assessments demonstrated that a WAS final total solid content of 5% was enough to avoid the employment of auxiliar...
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