Performance Enhancement of Anaerobic Treatment of Waste Sludge by Chemical Pretreatment

화학적 전처리를 통한 혐기성 슬러지 처리효율의 향상

Laboratory-scale experiment using anaerobic fluidized bed reactor was carried out to investigate the prehydrolysis step with caustic soda on the treatment efficiency of anaerobic sludge treatment, since the overall rate-limiting step for the complete anaerobic digestion of sludge was the hydrolysis step by extracellular bacterial enzymes of insoluble polymeric molecules. Reactors received a sludge which had not been pretreated, a 50-50 mixture of pretreated and untreated sludge, and the fully pretreated sludge. Hydraulic retention time of 10, 5, 2.5 days and 1 day were applied with an respective equivalent organic loading rate of 1.17, 2.23, 4.17, 11.24 gCOD/L/d. Reactor with the untreated sludge did not archieve adequate digestion even at the HRT of 5 days, and reactor, which received the 50-50 mixture, operated well at the HRT of 5 days, but began to show signs of unstable digestion at the HRT of 2.5 days. While, reactor, which was fed the hydrolyzed sludge, operated reasonably well at the 2.5 days, but was showing somewhat decrease in removal efficiencies. Results, therefore, have substantiated that the limiting reaction in the anaerobic treatment process is hydrolysis. The soluble COD did not significantly accumulate in the reactor as organic acid form, even when they were highly stressed. It was believed that this resistance to a build-up of organic acids and soluble COD behavior was mainly due to the maintenance of the methane bacteria in the fixed-film system which prevents washout as the organic loading increased. The anaerobic fluidized bed reactor was therefore effective for the digestion of waste activated sludge at short HRT.