• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.103-114
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• 1995

Since autoheated thermophilic aerobic digestion (ATAD) process has various advantages for the treatment of high-strength organic wastewater, active research and field application has been applied in U.S.A. and Canada, recently and the interest in ATAD process has been elevated for treating high-strength organic wastewater efficiently in Korea. Therefore, various experiments were carried out to evaluate the feasibility of ATAD process for the treatment of pig manure wastewater. The results of this study showed possibility to reuse pig manure wastewater as wet fodder or liquid compost, since ATAD process led excellent stabilization on the basis of odor and putrefaction. However. digested sludge can not be provided as wet fodder to most of hog farms without changing dry feeder system into wet system and as liquid compost to hog farms not having their own grass land. Since the results showed that the increase of temperature in reactor was resulted not from energy by biological activity. but from mechanical mixing energy. the reactor investigated in this study was against the principle of ATAD process. Therefore. if pig manure wastewater treated by ATAD can not be utilized as wet fodder. it is not economical to adopt ATAD process only for the treatment of wastewater.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.279-284
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• 2013

In this study, the feasibility of a single-stage thermophilic aerobic process for the treatment of high-strength food wastewater produced from the recycling process of food wastes was examined to substitute anaerobic digestion process. Also, the removal and stability of thermophilic aerobic process were assessed according to the changes of hydraulic retention times (HRTs) and organic loading rates (OLRs). When the OLR increased from 9.2 to $37.2kgCOD/m^3d$, a pH value in R1 (HRT : 5 d) significantly decreased to 5.0, due to the organic acid accumulation. On the other hand, the pH value in R2 (HRT : 10 d) was stable and R2 showed the high removal of COD, organic acid and lipid, even though the OLR increased from 4.6 to $18.6kgCOD/m^3d$. In R1, the COD loading rates for COD removal was suddenly dropped, as the COD loading rate increased from 18.6 to $28.4kgCOD/m^3d$. In contrast, R2 showed that the COD loading rates for COD removal increased with regard to increment in the loading rates of 3.61, 7.05, 9.43 and $12.2kgCOD/m^3d$, indicative of the high COD removal efficiency. Therefore, the results demonstrated that over 10-d HRT, the high concentration of raw food wastewater was efficiently treated in the single-stage thermophilic aerobic process.

• Proceedings of KOSOMES biannual meeting
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.97-102
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• 2007

The piggery wastewater is the major source of the water pollution problem in the rural area. The treatment alternatives for piggery wastewater are limited by the characteristics of both high organic and nitrogen(N) content. In order to investigate an efficient N removal system, the thermophilic aerobic digestion process was examined. The experiment was investigated organic and nitrogen removal efficiency at various HRTs and air supply volume. The results of semi-continuous experiment indicated that a higher removal of the soluble portion of COD was achieved with the longer HRTs. However, the inert portion of COD in piggery wastewater was not much changed by thermophilic aerobic digestion. In addition, with the higher HRT of 3 days, up to 79% of NH4-N removal efficiency was achieved. Lower the HRTs, a decrease of NH4-N removal was founds. The gas samples from the lab reactor were analyzed along with the N content in influent and effluent. The N2O formation in our system indicates a novel aerobic deammonification process occurred during the thermophilic aerobic digestion. Both N02 and N03 were not presented in the effluent of thermophilic aerobic digester. With the HRT of 3 days, 36.4% of influent N(or 57.5% removal N) was aerobically converted to N2O gas. The ammonium conversion to N2O gas significantly decrease to 4.5% at low HRT of .05 day..

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.906-912
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• 2007

A lab-scale thermophilic aerobic digestion (TAD) system was operated at $64^{\circ}C$ with mixed primary and secondary sludges taken from a large wastewater treatment plant. The semi-continuously operated reactor at HRTs of 1, 3 and 6 days indicated that longer HRT could stabilize sludge organics and solids comparable to anaerobic digestion. It has been found that reduced HRT of 3 and 1 day produced the effluent with highly biodegradable soluble organics, indicating the possibility of energy recovery in TAD. No proof of biological nitrification was observed at thermophilic operating temperature of $64^{\circ}C$, while nitrogen removal seemed due to nitrogen exertion during the aerobic thermophilic cell synthesis as well as ammonia stripping.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.63-70
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• 2013

Experiments in a pilot-scale hybrid multi-stage unit system (HMUS) combination of ATAD and EGSB followed by SBR process for pig slurry treatment were conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of using autothermal thermophilic aerobic digestion (ATAD) and expended granular sludge bed (EGSB) followed by sequencing batch reactor (SBR) system. Contaminants in pig slurry with high organic matter, nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) content were completely removed in the combined process. The highest removal rate for CODcr among contaminants in the feed pig slurry was attained by about 43.3% in ATAD unit process. Also TS removal rate of 96.5% was attained and the highest in the next coagulation unit process. The highest removal rate of CODcr under operating parameter conditions of OLR(organic loading rate), 3-6Kg $COD/m^3{\cdot}day$ and line velocity, 1.5-4m/h was earned at 3days of HRT. The disinfection of pathogens was effective at 50,000mg/L of TS in ATAD unit process. Biogas production per organic removal was $2.3{\sim}8.5m^3/kgTS{\cdot}d$ (average $5.2m^3/kgTS{\cdot}d$) in EGSB unit process. The average removal rates of CODcr 71.7%, TS 64.1%, TN 45.9%, and TP 50.4% were earned in the intermittent aeration SBR unit process.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.732-739
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• 2010

Two combined autothermal thermophilic aerobic digestion (ATAD) and biofilter (BF) systems were operated to treat the piggery wastewater and the ammonia offgas. Experimental results indicated that the organic removal efficiency of ATAD-2, operated with oxygen, was higher than that of ATAD-1, operated with air. The concentration of ammonia in ATAD-2 offgas was higher compared to ATAD-1 offgas, but the total amount of ammonia produced from ATAD-2 was less than that from ATAD-1 due to the lower oxygen flowrate. The ammonia gas produced from both ATAD reactors was successfully removed by the BF. The BF-1, connected with ATAD-1, removed 93% of ammonia at the loading rate of $9.4g\;NH_3-N/m^3/hr$. The BF-2, connected with ATAD-2, removed 95% of ammonia gas at the loading rate of $8.1g\;NH_3-N/m^3/hr$. As the nitrification process continued, pH value of recirculating solution continuously decreased due to the accumulation of nitrate. When the ammonia loading rate was less than $22.7g\;NH_3-N/m^3/h$, the proper replacing cycle of recirculating solution was in the range of 10 to 11 days. Almost 90% of total mass of nitrogen fed into the each BF was confirmed from the mass balance on nitrogen.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.490-495
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• 2005

Since there are very limited numbers of thermophilic anaerobic digesters being operated, it is often difficult to start up a new one using sludge from an existing reactor as a seed. However, for obvious reasons it seems few attempts have been made to compare the start-up performance of thermophilic anaerobic digestion using different sources of seed sludges. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the start-up performance of anaerobic digestion using aerobic Waste Activated Sludge (WAS) from a plant and mesophilic Anaerobic Digested Sludge (ADS) as the seed source at both mesophilic ($35^{\circ}C$) and thermophilic ($55^{\circ}C$) temperatures. In this study, two experiments were conducted. First, thermophilic anaerobic reactors were seeded with WAS (VSS = 4,400 mg/L) and ADS (VSS = 14,500 mg/L) to investigate start-up performance with a feed of acetate as well as propionate. The results show that WAS started to produce $CH_4$ soon after acetate feeding without a lag time, while ADS had a lag time of 10 days. When the feed was changed to propionate, WAS removed propionate down to below the detection limit of 10 mg/L, while ADS removed little propionate and produced little $CH_4$. Second, in order to further compare the methanogenic activity of WAS and ADS, both mesophilic and thermophilic reactors were operated. WAS acclimated to anaerobic conditions shortly and after acclimating it produced more $CH_4$ than ADS. WAS at mesophilic temperature biodegraded acetate at the same rate as for thermophilic. However WAS at mesophilic temperature biodegraded propionate at a much faster rate than at thermophilic. WAS as the seed source of anaerobic digestion resulted in much better performance than ADS at both mesophilic and thermophilic temperatures for both acetate and propionate metabolism.