Abstract
In order to recycle the waste material and to develop the thickening unit of waste activated sludge from wastewater treatment facilities, the filtration bio-reactor equipped with a shadow mask filter module was employed for this work from which the operating properties and parameters were drawn. The sludge thickening and filtration unit is made of cylindrical acryl tank(12cm i.d. ${\times}$ 58cm height: working volume of 6L), where the flat-sheet type of shadow mask filter module(pore size: 220~250um, opening area: 34.8~39.6%) was installed and the effluent was withdrawn from the effluent port at the lowest point of the reactor, and the filtration was performed only by the hydraulic pressure. For evaluating the operating performance of this reactor, some parameters such as the solid-liquid separation of different biomass concentrations, the water quality of filtrate, the aeration cleaning time and the cleaning effect were investigated. Depending on the MLSS concentrations, the different time to withdraw 3L of filtrate was required in which the longer filtration time was necessary for the higher MLSS concentrations caused by the thicker formation of cake layer: 40 minutes for 5,000 mg/L, 70 minutes for 10,000 mg/L and 100 minutes for 15,000 mg/L, where the concentrations of SS were 8.9, 6.7 and 6.5 mg/L, respectively. Under the same operating conditions (the intensity of aeration cleaning: 80 L/min, MLSS: 10,000 mg/L), the proper aeration cleaning time was revealed 30 seconds, and the stable formation of cake layer was in the range of 10 to 15 minutes. Therefore, the shadow mask considered as a waste material can be of use as a filter material for the sludge thickening system.
