Investigating upflow anaerobic sludge blanket process to treat forward osmosis effluents of concentrated municipal wastewater under psychrophilic temperature
- PUBLICATIONS
- Nov 12, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
Authors: Stavroula Kappa, Charitini Nikolaidou, Constantinos Noutsopoulos, Daniel Mamais, Elpi Hadjimitsi, Panagiotis G. Kougias, Simos Malamis
Journal: Bioresource Technology
Year: 2024
Keywords: Anaerobic process, Municipal wastewater preconcentration, Methane recovery, COD valorisation
Highlights
Decrease of UASB performance by applying progressively lower HRT.
Improvement of methane yields by applying organic rich FO effluents in UASB.
Proliferation of methanogenic bacteria by simulating FO pre-concentrated wastewater.
Enhancement of energy recovery from municipal wastewater by FO-UASB combination.
Abstract
This work investigated the stability of the Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) reactor under psychrophilic temperatures with varying feed streams, simulating typical and concentrated sewage. In Phase I, treating municipal wastewater, chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal dropped from 77 ± 6 % to 41 ± 2 % as hydraulic retention time decreased from 24 to 12 h and organic loading rate (OLR) increased from 0.6 to 1.3. In Phase II, at a similar OLR (≈1.2 , the UASB treated organic-rich effluents (from 1.0 to 2.1 ± 0.1 ) resulting from the pre-treatment of the forward osmosis (FO) process. The UASB performance improved significantly, achieving 87 ± 3 % COD removal and 63 ± 4 % methane recovery, with microbial analysis confirming methanogen growth. The COD mass balance showed up to 30 % more electrical energy recovery from sewage compared to conventional wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), indicating that the FO-UASB combination is a promising approach to achieve energy-neutral operation in WWTPs.
Citation: Kappa, S., Nikolaidou, C., Noutsopoulos, C., Mamais, D., Hadjimitsi, E., Kougias, P.G. and Malamis, S., 2024. Investigating upflow anaerobic sludge blanket process to treat forward osmosis effluents of concentrated municipal wastewater under psychrophilic temperature. Bioresource Technology, 412, p.131361.
Link to publication: doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2024.131361
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