Experimental Assessment of the Degradation of "Unbiodegradable" Organic Solids in Activated Sludge

In current process models activated sludge consists of biodegradable and unbiodegradable organic fractions. Recent evidence suggests that this approach may not be accurate because some of this "unbiodegradable" material may indeed be degradable. To improve sludge production predictions, it...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Water environment research 2016-03, Vol.88 (3), p.272-279
Main Authors: Friedrich, M., Takács, I., Tränckner, Jens
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
activated sludge
Algorithms
Biodegradation
Biomass
decay
Experiments
OUR
Oxygen
Sewage - analysis
Sludge
Solids
unbiodegradable organic compounds
VSS
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Summary:In current process models activated sludge consists of biodegradable and unbiodegradable organic fractions. Recent evidence suggests that this approach may not be accurate because some of this "unbiodegradable" material may indeed be degradable. To improve sludge production predictions, it is important to know to what extent the "unbiodegradable" organic fraction is degradable. Assuming that volatile suspended solids (VSS) is a measure of the sum of biodegradable and unbiodegradable organic solids and the integral of the oxygen uptake rate (OUR) is representative of the biodegradable organics, the combination of these measurements can be used to predict the change of unbiodegradable organic solids within an aerobic digestion batch experiment. This procedure was used to estimate degradation rates of "unbiodegradable" VSS between 0.006 to 0.029 d⁻¹. The advantage of the proposed method is that the degradation rate can be determined directly based on measurements and relies on a limited number of assumptions.
ISSN:1061-4303
1554-7531
DOI:10.2175/106143016X14504669767779