• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.810-815
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• 2010

Ultrasonic sludge pre-treatment has been studied to enhance the performance of anaerobic digestion by increasing sludge hydrolysis which is regarded as the rate-limiting-step of anaerobic digestion. In this study, the effect of ultrasonic pre-treatment on sludge hydrolysis (solubilization) and methane production was investigated. Sludge solubilization efficiency increased with ultrasonic energy input. However, it is uneconomical to apply more than 720 kJ/L as the solubilization efficiency per energy input declines afterwards. Volatile fatty acids concentration increased after the ultrasonic sludge hydrolysis. Anaerobic batch digestion showed that methane volume reached 64.7 and 84.5 mL after 18 days of incubation with the control sludge and ultrasonically hydrolyzed sludge, respectively. Methane production potential, maximum methane production rate, and the lag time of modified Gompertz equation were changed from 70 mL, 6.4 mL/day, and 1.2 days to 89 mL, 9.6 mL/day, and 0.5 day, respectively, after the ultrasonic sludge treatment. The results proved that ultrasonic pre-treatment contributed significantly not only for the methane production but also for the reduction of anaerobic digestion time which is critical for the performance of anaerobic sludge digestion.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.110-119
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• 2016

High-solid anaerobic digestion of sewage sludge achieves highly efficient volatile solid reduction, and production of volatile fatty acid (VFA) and methane compared with conventional low-solid anaerobic digestion. In this study, the potential mechanisms of the better performance in high-solid anaerobic digestion of sewage sludge were investigated by using 454 high-throughput pyrosequencing and real-time PCR to analyze the microbial characteristics in sewage sludge fermentation reactors. The results obtained by 454 highthroughput pyrosequencing revealed that the phyla Chloroflexi, Bacteroidetes, and Firmicutes were the dominant functional microorganisms in high-solid and low-solid anaerobic systems. Meanwhile, the real-time PCR assays showed that high-solid anaerobic digestion significantly increased the number of total bacteria, which enhanced the hydrolysis and acidification of sewage sludge. Further study indicated that the number of total archaea (dominated by Methanosarcina) in a high-solid anaerobic fermentation reactor was also higher than that in a low-solid reactor, resulting in higher VFA consumption and methane production. Hence, the increased key bacteria and methanogenic archaea involved in sewage sludge hydrolysis, acidification, and methanogenesis resulted in the better performance of high-solid anaerobic sewage sludge fermentation.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.15 no.9
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• pp.897-905
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• 2006

This study has been conducted to investigate biodegradation characteristics and optimum mixing ratio for co-digestion with thermophilic acid-fermented food waste and sewage sludge using batch anaerobic digester. As the basis operating conditions for anaerobic digestion, the reaction temperature was controlled $35{\pm}1^{\circ}C$ and stirrer was set 70rpm. Thermophilic acid-fermented food waste and sewage sludge were mixed at the ratio of 10:0, 7:3, 5:5, 3:7, 0:10 and 5;5(food waste : sewage sludge) as the influent substrates. In results of co-digestion according to mixing ratio of thermophilic fermented food wastes and sewage sludge in batch mesophilic anaerobic digestion reactor, $385mL\;CH_4/g\;VS_{added}$ of methane production rate at 1:1 mixing ratio was more than that of any other mixing ratios. Compared with $293mL\;CH_4/g\;VS_{added}$ of methane production rate at 1:1 mixing ratio of food wastes and sewage sludge, pretreatment of food wastes by thermophilic acid fermentation was more effective in co-digestion with sewage sludge.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.103-109
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• 2010

Anaerobic digestion has been widely used for the treatment of sludge, which is generated from the municipal and industrial wastewater treatment, for its volume reduction and methane production. Many researches on sludge pre-treatment have been carried out in order to enhance the performance of anaerobic digestion by increasing the hydrolysis of sludge which is the rate limiting step of anaerobic digestion. In this study, the effect of pre-treatment on sludge hydrolysis(solubilization), methane production and sludge reduction by anaerobic digestion after thermal, ultrasonic, and thermal-alkali sludge treatment were compared. Thermal-alkali treatment showed 67 and 70% solubilization with municipal and industrial wastewater sludge, respectively, while ultrasonic treatment and thermal treatment gave similar solubilization efficiency of 40% or more. Methane content of the anaerobic digestion gas reached 45~70% and pretreated sludge gave higher methane content than the control sludge. Methane production of thermal, ultrasonic, and thermal-alkali pre-treatment gave 2.6, 2.7, 3.5 times of municipal control sludge and 3.5, 4.1, 4.2 times of industrial control sludge, respectively. Sludge reduction of pre-treated sludge after anaerobic digestion gave 5~19% point higher than that of control sludge, and thermal-alkali treatment showed higher reduction efficiency than thermal and ultrasonic treatment. The results proved that pre-treatment contributed significantly not only for the methane production but also for the cost reduction of sludge treatment and disposal, and thermal-alkali treatment gave the best performance for the sludge treatment.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.611-616
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• 2011

The impacts of ultrasonic pretreatment on the biodegradability of domestic sewage sludge were evaluated through a series of anaerobic digestion experiments in batch system. The gas and methane production from the sludge samples pretreated by an ultrasonic tool with different durations were measured with time. Although the biogas production increased with the extent of sludge solubilization and the period of ultrasonic pretreatment, the enhancement of sludge biodegradability was much more sensitive to the pretreatment for the relatively short periods. Most of the enhanced biodegradability by the pretreatment was appeared in the early stage of anaerobic digestion, less than 6 days. The maximum biogas production per day was observed between 4 to 6 days when the sludge was pretreated less than 10 minutes while it was obtained in the beginning for the sludge pretreated longer periods. The results suggest that the repeated alternation of low strength ultrasonic pretreatment and anaerobic digestion may be more effective than the combination of one time pretreatment for a relatively long period and following anaerobic digestion.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.1061-1066
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• 2014

This study has cross checked the change of internal sludge-recycle in Anaerobic-Digestion, and researched about not only the improvement of Bio-gas production from the digested sludge but also the efficient method of sludge minimization. Ultimate object of the study is to reduce the amount of sludge by the improved efficiency of contact with the organic-matter and the microbes in Anaerobic-Digestion. The sludge-recycle fluidized sludge layer and raised the activity of the sludge, the optimal sludge-recycle ratio, VS and COD removal ratio were 1,000%, 28.2% and 27.7%, respectively. Through these results of this study, it may be of use to treat waste sludge by the sludge-recycle ratio in terms of minimization and circulation of resources.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2004.09a
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• pp.207-210
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• 2004

Effect of electron accepters on anaerobic degradation of petroleum hydrocarbons by an anaerobic sludge taken from a sludge digestion tank in a soil artificially contaminated with 10,000 mg/kg soil of diesel fuel was tested. Treatments of soil with 30 mL of the digestion sludge (2,000 mg/L of vss (volatile suspended solids)) were incubated under several anaerobic conditions including nitrate reducing, sulfate reducing, methanogenic, and mixed electron accepters conditions for 120 days. Treatments with the digested sludge showed significant degradation of diesel fuel under all anaerobic conditions compare to control treatments with an autoclaved sludge and without the sludge. The amount of TPH degradation after 120days incubation was the largest in the treatment with the sludge and mixed electron accepters (75% removal of TPH) followed in order by sulfate reducing, nitrate reducing, methanegenic condition as 67%, 53％, 43%, respectively. However, the rate of TPH degradation in the nitrate- and sulfate reducing condition within 105 days were comparable with that of the mixed electron accepters condition. Microorganisms in each electron acceptor condition were plated on solid mediums containing nitrate or sulfate as sole electron acceptor and several nitrate- and sulfate reducing bacteria showed effective degradation of diesel fuel within 30 days incubations. These results suggest that anaerobic degradation of diesel fuel in soil with digested sludge is effective for practical remediation of soil contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons.

• 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.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.927-933
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• 2007

Waste activated sludge (WAS) was thermally pretreated to enhance hydrolysis and ultimately methane yield. Batch and semi-continuous anaerobic digestion were conducted to evaluate the performance of methane fermentation of the hydrolyzed sludge and to investigate the kinetics of sludge fermentation. Thermal pretreatment remarkably enhanced digestion performances particularly the methane fermentation with three times more methane production than before the pretreatment. Gas production and kinetic parameters in the semi-continuous anaerobic digestion were estimated using Chen Hashimoto model. The model simulation fitted well the experimental results and the model was shown to be suitable for evaluating the effects of disintegration of WAS in anaerobic digestion. Three parameters ($B_o$, K, and ${\mu}_m$) determined by model simulation were $0.0807L-CH_4/g-VS$, 0.453 and $0.154d^{-1}$ for control sludge, and $0.253L-CH_4/g-VS$, 0.835 and $0.218d^{-1}$ for thermally pretreated sludge, respectively.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.825-831
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• 2012

The retrofitting of a thickening unit process is widely considered in municipal wastewater treatment plants in Korea to enhance the anaerobic digestion efficiency. The authors examined the effect of feed concentration (2-34.1 g VS/L) and feed to microorganism (F/M) ratio (0.50-1.35 g VS/g VS) on anaerobic batch digestion of sewage sludge. Methane yield over 90 mL $CH_4/g$ $VS_{feed}$ was found at a feed concentration in the range of 12-26 g VS/L and a F/M ratio below 0.6 g VS/g VS. A high F/M ratio decreased methane yield and rate with oragnic acid accumulation. As sudden increase of sewage sludge concentration prior to anaerobic digestion would jeopardize the digester performance due to the rasied F/M ratio, gradual increase of the sludge feed concentration or an additional biomass retention in the digester is recommended.