• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.31 no.12
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• pp.1113-1122
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• 2009

In order to find the way to solve the problem of sewage sludge discharge into the ocean, the sludge solubilization by ultrasonic and the improvement methods of wastewater treatment process were studied. In the membrane bioreactor the sludge retention time was stepwise increased from 5.1 day to 442 days where the biomass average concentration has been increased from $c_B$=3.4 $gTSSL^{-1}$ to $c_B$=14.5 $gTSSL^{-1}$ respectively. At the same time, the biomass yield coefficients were reduced from 0.5-0.7 at SRT=5.1 day to 0.005-0.007 at SRT=442 days which means the reduction of sludge production. Oxygen mass transfer coefficients and ${\alpha}$-factor were investigated with changing stirrer speed to find the relation between the high biomass concentration and aeration efficiency in the propeller loop reactor. As a result of sludge solubilization, the solubilization of sludge by ultrasound was increased with increasing energy input and it led to improved anaerobic digestion rate with more biogas production than that of nonsolubilized sewage sludge.

• Journal of environmental and Sanitary engineering
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.25-31
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• 1999

Energy recovery technology from municipal solid waste has been increasingly established in many countries. Anaerobic treatment of municipal sewage sludge has low digestion efficiency because of low organic loading rate of sewage sludge. The purpose of this study was to evaluate anaerobic biodegradability of food waste which was based on organic loading rate and seeding rate. From the results of anaerbic biodegration, the optimum condition for seeding rate was turn out over 40%, which did not inhibition of methane production.

• 한국생물공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.128-131
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• 2003

The effect of microwave irradiation on waste activated sludge was investigated in order to improve solubilization. a different levels of microwave irradiation time were varied within a range from 1 min to 15 min. When WAS was pretreated at 1, 3, 5, 7, and 15 min, the SCOD concentration increased according to microwave irradiation time. A simple batch procedure was used to measure the VFA potential, i.e. the amount of VFA that can be formed through digestion of organic constituent in sludge. At equilibrium point, TVFA in the case of 1, 3, 5, 7 and 15 min microwaved sludges was 8%, 122%, 243%, 279% and 232% higher than that in the case of raw sludge, respectively.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.48-52
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• 2009

Solubilization of sewage sludge creates favorable conditions for anaerobic microorganisms to produce biogas. In this paper, we quantify the effect of heating pretreatment on the degree of solubilization of sewage sludge. The pretreatment process was carried out using a lab-scale industrial microwave unit (2450 MHz frequency). Response surface analysis was applied to determine the combination of temperature-increase rate (ramp rate) (2.9 to 17.1 ${^{\circ}C}$/min) and terminal temperature (52 to 108${^{\circ}C}$). Both ramp rate and temperature significantly affected the solubilization degree of sludge. Within the design boundaries, the conditions predicted to maximize the solubilization degree of 15.8% were determined to be 2.9 ${^{\circ}C}$/min and 104${^{\circ}C}$.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.121-129
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• 2004

Anaerobic digestion is the most common process for sewage sludge stabilization and has benefits of VS reduction and biogas production. Many pretreatment methods have been studied to improve hydrolysis rate because the rate of sewage sludge degradation is slow in anaerobic digestion. This study mainly focused upon the effects on disintegration of sewage sludge by ultrasonic pretreatment according to the variation of acoustic density and duration of sonication time. In this study, acoustic density has been changed as follows : 33W/L, 70W/L, 88W/L, 139W/L in case of 40 kHz with the test time changes of 10min, 20min, 25min, 30min and 40min. In the comparison of $SCOD_{Cr}/TCOD_{Cr}$ variation for excess sludge and mixed sludge disintegration, the rates of $SCOD_{Cr}/TCOD_{Cr}$ have been increased in the condition of denser acoustic density and longer sonication time with acoustic frequency of 40kHz. The pH of the excess sewage sludge and mixed sewage sludge has been decreased in the condition of denser acoustic density and longer sonication time with acoustic frequency of 40kHz.

• Journal of environmental and Sanitary engineering
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.73-82
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• 2008

In this study, a dry single-phase anaerobic digestion process (Dranco system) was investigated to evaluate the optimum operational conditions. Several factors such as injection rate of organic waste, biogas production, $CH_4$ content in the biogas, pH of the sludge, $NH_3$-N and VFA concentration were investigated based on the operation of the digestion process for 2 months (short term) and 8 months (long-term). The operation results showed that a small quantity of food waste should be injected every week and that a 10% increase of the microorganism injection rate should be needed. However, normal operation was conducted after 11 weeks based on the designed quantity. The $CH_4$ content in the biogas was high at the beginning and the end of the food injection. However, it was low during week days. When the biogas production was high, the $CH_4$ concentration was low. The biogas production increased with an increase of the injection rate. $100m^3$/ton of biogas was produced from normal operation of the digestion process based on the designed quantity. The pH values of the digestion tank based on short-term operation ranged from 8 to 8.5. However, the pH values ranged from 7.45 to 8.15 after 4 weeks of long-term operation. The $NH_3$-N concentration of short-term operation ranged from 4,500 to 5,500 ppm and it gradually decreased to 2,000ppm after normal operation was commenced. For long-term operation, it was 5,000ppm initially and 3,800ppm after normal operation was commenced. The VFA concentration of sludge was less than 900ppm and 2,500ppm for short and long-term operations, respectively, after normal operation. Overall, the differences between sludge pH, $NH_3$-N and VFA concentrations may be due to the different types of microorganisms and the digestion ability of the microorganisms which exist in the accumulation of non digested organics. Moreover, it may be also caused by the type of food waste. Further investigation is needed to confirm these relationships.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.27-40
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• 2022

In this study, the anaerobic digestion potential and thermo-chemical pre-treatment were evaluated for efficient anaerobic co-digestion of dewatered sludge(DS) and food waste(FW). As a result, the degradable organic matter concentration and methane yield of FW were evaluated to 2.2 and 1.3 times higher than that of DS, respectively. In order to increase the amount of biogas production, it was determined that it is desirable to increase the mixing ratio of FW. The efficiency of thermo-chemical pre-treatment was evaluated for the reaction temperature, NaOH concentration, reaction time and mixture ratio. As a result of evaluation through pre-treatment efficiency and dehydration capacity, the optimum pre-treatment conditions were evaluated as follows: reaction temperature 140℃, NaOH concentration 60 meq/L, reaction time 60 min, mixture ratio 1:5(DS:FW). The gas production rate and methane yield increased 1.6 and 1.5 times, respectively, compared to before and after applying the optimum pre-treatment. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the mixing ratio of food waste for efficient anaerobic co-digestion of DS and FW. and it is necessary to increase the solubilization efficiency of waste by application of pre-treatment.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.71-81
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• 2005

Anaerobic digestion is employed worldwide as the oldest and most important process for sludge stabilization. An additional advantage is the production of methane during anaerobic digestion. However, the waste activated sludge(WAS) has poor anaerobic degradability and less gas production due to the cell wall of bio-solid. In order to improve and enhance stabilization and dewatering of the WAS, a number of pretreatment processes have been developed and investigated. In this research, a pilot-scale study of pulse power pretreatment was performed to improve anaerobic degradability and dewaterability of the WAS. A pilot plant was designed and operated based on a previous laboratory study. Change of the sludge characteristics by pulse power pretreatment was estimated to assess the increasing soluble organics. The increased soluble organics could be used as a good substrate in the anaerobic digesion process. Gas production and methane potential of the anaerobic digestion were estimated as the parameters of anaerobic degradability. For evaluation of the dewaterability of pretreated WAS, capillary suction time(CST) and specific resistance were measured. The efficiency of energy recovery was also estimated by calculating energy balance.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.24 no.11
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• pp.1542-1550
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• 2014

Co-digesting molasses wastewater and sewage sludge was evaluated for hydrogen production by response surface methodology (RSM). Batch experiments in accordance with various dilution ratios (40- to 5-fold) and waste mixing composition ratios (100:0, 80:20, 60:40, 40:60, 20:80, and 0:100, on a volume basis) were conducted. Volatile solid (VS) concentration strongly affected the hydrogen production rate and yield compared with the waste mixing ratio. The specific hydrogen production rate was predicted to be optimal when the VS concentration ranged from 10 to 12 g/l at all the mixing ratios of molasses wastewater and sewage sludge. A hydrogen yield of over 50 ml $H_2/gVS_{removed}$ was obtained from mixed waste of 10% sewage sludge and 10 g/l VS (about 10-fold dilution ratio). The optimal chemical oxygen demand/total nitrogen ratio for co-digesting molasses wastewater and sewage sludge was between 250 and 300 with a hydrogen yield above 20 ml $H_2/gVS_{removed}$.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.5-13
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• 2022

The current environmental problem is that environmental pollution is accelerating due to the generation of large amounts of waste and indiscriminate consumption of energy. Fossil fuels, a representative energy production fuel, are burned in the process of producing energy, generating a large amount of greenhouse gases and eventually causing climate change. In addition, the amount of waste generated worldwide is continuously increasing, and environmental pollution is occurring in the process of waste treatment. One of the methods for simultaneously solving these problems is the energy recovery from and reduction of organic wastes. Sewage sludge generated in sewage treatment plants has been treated in various ways since ocean disposal was completely prohibited, but the amount generated has been continuously increasing. Since the sewage sludge contains a large amount of organic materials, it is desirable to recover energy from the sewage sludge and reduce the final discharged waste through anaerobic digestion. However, most of the excess sludge is a mass of microorganisms used in sewage treatment, and in order for the excess sludge to be anaerobically digested, the cell walls of the microorganisms must be destroyed first, but it takes a lot of time to destroy the cell walls, so high rates of biogas production and waste reduction cannot be achieved only by anaerobic digestion. Therefore, the pre-treatment process of solubilizing excess sludge is required, and the thermal solubilization process is verified to be the most efficient among various solubilization methods, and high rates of biogas production and waste reduction can be achieved by anaerobic digestion after destroying cell walls the thermal solubilization process. In this study, when pretreating TS 10% thickened excess sludge through a thermal solubilization system, a study was conducted on solubilization characteristics according to retention time and operating temperature variables. The experimental variables for the retention time of the thermal solubilization system were 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, and 120 minutes, respectively, while the operating temperature was fixed at 160℃. The soulbilization rates calculated through TCOD and SCOD derived from the experimental results increased in the order of 12.11%, 20.52%, 28.62%, and 31.40%, respectively. And the variables according to operating temperature were 120℃, 140℃, 160℃, 180℃, and 200℃, respectively, while the operating retention time was fixed at 60 minutes. And the solubilization rates increased in the order of 7.14%, 14.52%, 20.52%, 40.72%, and 57.85%, respectively. In addition, TS, VS, T-N, T-P, NH₄⁺-N, and VFAs were analyzed to evaluate thermal solubilization characteristics of thickened excess sludge. As a result, in order to obtain 30% or more solubilization rate through thermal solubilization of TS 10% thickened excess sludge, 120 minutes of retention time is required when the operating temperature is fixed to 160℃, and 170℃ or more of operating temperature is needed when the operating time is fixed to 60 minutes.