The UASB process among other treatment methods has been recognized as a core method of an advanced technology for environmental protection. This paper highlights the treatment of seven types of wastewaters i.e. palm oil mill effluent (POME), distillery wastewater, slaughterhouse wastewater, piggery wastewater, dairy wastewater, fishery wastewater and municipal wastewater (black and gray) by UASB process. The purpose of this study is to explore the pollution load of these wastewaters and their treatment potential use in upflow anaerobic sludge blanket process. The general characterization of wastewater, treatment in UASB reactor with operational parameters and reactor performance in terms of COD removal and biogas production are thoroughly discussed in the paper. The concrete data illustrates the reactor configuration, thus giving maximum awareness about upflow anaerobic sludge blanket reactor for further research. The future aspects for research needs are also outlined.
The physical characteristics, microbial activities and kinetic properties of the granular sludge biomass were investigated under the influence of different hydraulic retention times (HRT) along with the performance of the system in removal of color and COD of synthetic textile wastewater. The study was conducted in a column reactor operated according to a sequential batch reactor with a sequence of anaerobic and aerobic reaction phases. Six stages of different HRTs and different anaerobic and aerobic reaction time were evaluated. It was observed that the increase in HRT resulted in the reduction of organic loading rate (OLR). This has caused a decrease in biomass concentration (MLSS), reduction in mean size of the granules, lowered the settling ability of the granules and reduction of oxygen uptake rate (OUR), overall specific biomass growth rate (ìoverall), endogeneous decay rate (kd) and biomass yield (Yobs, Y). When the OLR was increased by adding carbon sources (glucose, sodium acetate and ethanol), there was a slight increase in the MLSS, the granules mean size, ìoverall, and biomass yield. Under high HRT, increasing the anaerobic to aerobic reaction time ratio caused an increase in the concentration of MLSS, mean size of granules and lowered the SVI value and biomass yield. The ìoverall and biomass yield increased with the reduction in anaerobic/aerobic time ratio. The HRT of 24 h with anaerobic and aerobic reaction time of 17.8 and 5.8 h respectively appear to be the best cycle operation of SBR. Under these conditions, not only the physical properties of the biogranules have improved, the highest removal of color (i.e. 94.1±0.6%) and organics (i.e. 86.5±0.5%) of the synthetic textile dyeing wastewater have been achieved.
Intensive aeration for nitrification is a major energy consumer in sewage treatment plants (STPs). Low-dissolved-oxygen (low-DO) nitrification has the potential to lower the aeration demand. However, the applicability of low-DO nitrification in the tropical climate is not well-understood. In this study, the potential of low-DO nitrification in tropical setting was first examined using batch kinetic experiments. Subsequently, the performance of low-DO nitrification was investigated in a laboratory-scale sequential batch reactor (SBR) for 42 days using real tropical sewage. The batch kinetic experiments showed that the seed sludge has a relatively high oxygen affinity. Thus, the rate of nitrification was not significantly reduced at low DO concentrations (0.5 mg/L). During the operation of the low-DO nitrification SBR, 90% of NH4-N was removed. The active low-DO nitrification was mainly attributed to the limited biodegradable organics in the sewage. Fluorescence in-situ hybridisation and 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing revealed the nitrifiers were related to Nitrospira genus and Nitrosomonadaceae family. Phylogenetic analysis suggests 47% of the operational taxonomic units in Nitrospira genus are closely related to a comammox bacteria. This study has demonstrated active low-DO nitrification in tropical setting, which is a more sustainable process that could significantly reduce the energy footprint of STPs.
For decades, water treatment plants in Malaysia have widely employed aluminium-based coagulant for the removal of colloidal particles in surface water. This generates huge amount of by-product, known as sludge that is either reused for land applications or disposed to landfills. As sludge contains high concentration of aluminium, both can pose severe environmental issues. Therefore, this study explored the potential to recover aluminium from water treatment sludge using acid leaching process. The evaluation of aluminium recovery efficiency was conducted in two phases. The first phase used the one factor at a time (OFAT) approach to study the effects of acid concentration, solid to liquid ratio, temperature and heating time. Meanwhile, second phase emphasized on the optimization of aluminium recovery using Response Surface Methodology (RSM). OFAT results indicated that aluminium recovery increased with the rising temperature and heating time. Acid concentration and solid to liquid ratio, however, showed an initial increment followed by reduction of recovery with increasing concentration and ratio. Due to the solidification of sludge when acid concentration exceeded 4 M, this variable was fixed in the optimization study. RSM predicted that aluminium recovery can achieve 70.3% at optimal values of 4 M, 20.9%, 90 °C and 4.4 h of acid concentration, solid to liquid ratio, temperature and heating time, respectively. Experimental validation demonstrated a recovery of 68.8 ± 0.3%. The small discrepancy of 2.2 ± 0.4% between predicted and validated recovery suggests that RSM was a suitable tool in optimizing aluminium recovery conditions for water treatment sludge.
The present study intends to evaluate the potential of co-digestion for utilizing Organic fraction of Municipal Solid Waste (OFMSW) and sewage sludge (SS) for enhanced biogas production. Metagenomic analysis was performed to identify the dominant bacteria, archaea and fungi, changes in their communities with time and their functional roles during the course of anaerobic digestion (AD). The cumulative biogas yield of 586.2 mL biogas/gVS with the highest methane concentration of 69.5% was observed under an optimum ratio of OFMSW:SS (40:60 w/w). Bacteria and fungi were found to be majorly involved in hydrolysis and initial stages of AD. Probably, the most common archaea Methanosarsina sp. primarily followed the acetoclastic pathway. The hydrogenotrophic pathway was less followed as indicated by the reduction in abundance of syntrophic acetate oxidizers. An adequate understanding of microbial communities is important to manipulate and inoculate the specific microbial consortia to maximize CH4 production through AD.
Developing cost-effective technology for treatment of sewage and nitrogen-containing groundwater is one of the crucial challenges of global water industries. Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) oxidize organics from sewage by exoelectrogens on anode to produce electricity while denitrifiers on cathode utilize the generated electricity to reduce nitrogen from contaminated groundwater. As the exoelectrogens are incapable of oxidizing insoluble, polymeric, and complex organics, a novel integration of an anaerobic sequencing batch reactor (ASBR) prior to the MFC simultaneously achieve hydrolytic-acidogenic conversion of complex organics, boost power recovery, and remove Carbon/Nitrogen (C/N) from the sewage and groundwater. The results obtained revealed increases in the fractions of soluble organics and volatile fatty acids in pretreated sewage by 52 ± 19% and 120 ± 40%, respectively. The optimum power and current generation with the pretreated sewage were 7.1 W m-3 and 45.88 A m-3, respectively, corresponding to 8% and 10% improvements compared to untreated sewage. Moreover, the integration of the ASBR with the biocathode MFC led to 217% higher carbon and 136% higher nitrogen removal efficiencies compared to the similar system without ASBR. The outcomes of the present study represent the promising prospects of using ASBR pretreatment and successive utilization of solubilized organics in denitrifying biocathode MFCs for simultaneous energy recovery and C/N removal from both sewage and nitrate nitrogen-contaminated groundwater.
Integrated fixed-film activated sludge (IFAS) process is considered as one of the leading-edge processes that provides a sustainable solution for wastewater treatment. IFAS was introduced as an advancement of the moving bed biofilm reactor by integrating the attached and the suspended growth systems. IFAS offers advantages over the conventional activated sludge process such as reduced footprint, enhanced nutrient removal, complete nitrification, longer solids retention time and better removal of anthropogenic composites. IFAS has been recognized as an attractive option as stated from the results of many pilot and full scales studies. Generally, IFAS achieves >90% removals for combined chemical oxygen demand and ammonia, improves sludge settling properties and enhances operational stability. Recently developed IFAS reactors incorporate frameworks for either methane production, energy generation through algae, or microbial fuel cells. This review details the recent development in IFAS with the focus on the pilot and full-scale applications. The microbial community analyses of IFAS biofilm and floc are underlined along with the special emphasis on organics and nitrogen removals, as well as the future research perspectives.
Inflow and infiltration are important aspects of sewerage systems that need to be considered during the design stage and constantly monitored once the sewerage system is in operation. The aim of this research is to analyse the relationship of rainfall as well as inflow infiltration with sewage flow patterns through data collected from fieldwork. Three sewer pipelines were selected at the residential areas of Taman Lepar Hilir Saujana, Bandar Putra and Kota Sas for data collection. Sewage flow data were collected in terms of flowrate, velocity and depth of flow using flowmeters with ultrasonic sensors that utilize the continuous Doppler effect in the sewer pipelines, while rainfall intensity data were collected using rain gauges installed at the study locations. Based on the result, the average infiltration rates of Qpeak and Qave for the locations were 17% and 21%, which exceeded the respective values of 5% and 10% stated in Hammer and Hammer. The flowrate of wastewater in the sewer pipelines was found to be directly proportional to rainfall. These findings indicate that the sewer pipelines in the study areas may have been affected by capacity reduction, whereas the sewerage treatment plants receiving the wastewater influent may have been overloaded.
This paper presents an assessment of the start-up performance of aerobic granular sludge (AGS) for the treatment of low-strength (chemical oxygen demand, COD
To date, the development of renewable fuels has become a normal phenomenon to solve the problem of diesel fuel emissions and the scarcity of fossil fuels. Biodiesel production has some limitations, such as two-step processes requiring high free fatty acids (FFAs), oil feedstocks and gum formation. Hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) is a newly developed international renewable diesel that uses renewable feedstocks via the hydrotreatment process. Unlike FAME, FFAs percentage doesn't affect the HVO production and sustains a higher yield. The improved characteristics of HVO, such as a higher cetane value, better cold flow properties, lower emissions and excellent oxidation stability for storage, stand out from FAME biodiesel. Moreover, HVO is a hydrocarbon without oxygen content, but FAME is an ester with 11% oxygen content which makes it differ in oxidation stability. Waste sludge palm oil (SPO), an abundant non-edible industrial waste, was reused and selected as the feedstock for HVO production. Techno-economical and energy analyses were conducted for HVO production using Aspen HYSYS with a plant capacity of 25,000 kg/h. Alternatively, hydrogen has been recycled to reduce the hydrogen feed. With a capital investment of RM 65.86 million and an annual production cost of RM 332.56 million, the base case of the SPO-HVO production process was more desirable after consideration of all economic indicators and HVO purity. The base case of SPO-HVO production could achieve a return on investment (ROI) of 89.03% with a payback period (PBP) of 1.68 years. The SPO-HVO production in this study has observed a reduction in the primary greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2) emission by up to 90% and the total annual production cost by nearly RM 450 million. Therefore, SPO-HVO production is a potential and alternative process to produce biobased diesel fuels with waste oil.
Bacterial strains belonging to Citrobacter spp. were reported to produce polysaccharides consisting of N-acetylglucosamine and glucosamine like chitosan, with high flocculation activity. In this work, the flocculation dewatering performance of activated sludge conditioned by a novel cationic chitosan-like bioflocculant (BF) named BF01314, produced from Citrobacter youngae GTC 01314, was evaluated under the influences of flocculant dosage, pH, and temperature. At BF dosage as low as 0.5 kg/t DS, the sludge dewaterability was significantly enhanced in comparison to the raw (untreated) sludge, featuring well-flocculated characteristic (reduction in CST from 22.0 s to 9.4 s) and good sludge filterability with reduced resistance (reduction in SRF by one order from 7.42 × 1011 to 9.59 × 1010 m/kg) and increased compactness of sludge (increase in CSC from 15.2 to 23.2%). Besides, the BF demonstrated comparable high sludge dewatering performance within the pH range between 2 and 8, and temperature range between 25 °C and 80 °C. Comparison between the BF, the pristine chitosan and the commercial cationic copolymer MF 7861 demonstrated equivalent performance with enhanced dewaterability at the dosage between 2.0 and 3.0 kg/t DS. Besides, the BF demonstrated strong flocculation activity (>99%) when added to the sludge suspension using moderate to high flocculation speeds (100-200 rpm) with at least 3-min mixing time. The BF's reaction in sludge flocculation was best fitted with a pseudo first-order kinetic model. Electrostatic charge patching and polymer bridging mechanisms are believed to be the dominant mechanistic phenomena during the BF's sludge conditioning process (coagulation-flocculation).
Hydrothermal processing (HTP) is an efficient thermochemical technology to achieve sound treatment and resource recovery of sewage sludge (SS) in hot-compressed subcritical water. However, microplastics (MPs) and heavy metals can be problematic impurities for high-quality nutrients recovery from SS. This study initiated hydrothermal degradation of representative MPs (i.e., polyethylene (PE), polyamide (PA), polypropylene (PP)) under varied temperatures (180-300 °C) to understand the effect of four ubiquitous metal ions (i.e., Fe3+, Al3+, Cu2+, Zn2+) on MPs degradation. It was found that weight loss of all MPs in metallic reaction media was almost four times of that in water media, indicating the catalytic role of metal ions in HTP. Especially, PA degradation at 300 °C was promoted by Fe3+ and Al3+ with remarkable weight loss higher than 95% and 92%, respectively, which was ca. 160 °C lower than that in pyrolysis. Nevertheless, PE and PP were more recalcitrant polymers to be degraded under identical condition. Although higher temperature thermal hydrolysis reaction induced severe chain scission of polymers to reinforce degradation of MPs, Fe3+ and Al3+ ions demonstrated the most remarkable catalytic depolymerization of MPs via enhanced free radical dissociation rather than hydrolysis. Pyrolysis gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py GC-MS) was further complementarily applied with GC-MS to reveal HTP of MPs to secondary MPs and nanoplastics. This fundamental study highlights the crucial role of ubiquitous metal ions in MPs degradation in hot-compressed water. HTP could be an energy-efficient technology for effective treatment of MPs in SS with abundant Fe3+ and Al3+, which will benefit sustainable recovery of cleaner nutrients in hydrochar and value-added chemicals or monomers from MPs.
This critical review for anaerobic degradation of complex organic compounds like butyrate using reactors has been enormously applied for biogas production. Biogas production rate has a great impact on: reactor granulation methanogenesis, nutrient content, shear velocity, organic loading and loss of nutrients taking place in the reactor continuously. Various technologies have been applied to closed anaerobic reactors to improve biogas production and treatment efficiency. Recent reviews showed that the application of closed anaerobic reactors can accelerate the degradation of organics like volatile fatty acid-butyrate and affect microbial biofilm formation by increasing the number of methanogens and increase methane production 16.5 L-1 CH4 L-1 POME-1. The closed anaerobic reactors with stable microbial biofilm and established organic load were responsible for the improvement of the reactor and methane production. The technology mentioned in this review can be used to monitor biogas concentration, which directly correlates to organic concentrations. This review attempts to evaluate interactions among the: degradation of organics, closed anaerobic reactors system, and microbial granules. This article provides a useful picture for the improvement of the degradation of organic butyrate for COD removal, biogas and methane production in an anaerobic closed reactor.
Sewage contamination is a principal concern in water quality management as pathogens in sewage can cause diseases and lead to detrimental health effects in humans. This study examines the distribution of seven sterol compounds, namely coprostanol, epi-coprostanol, cholesterol, cholestanol, stigmasterol, campesterol, and β-sitosterol in filtered and particulate phases of sewage treatment plants (STPs), groundwater, and river water. For filtered samples, solid-phase extraction (SPE) was employed while for particulate samples were sonicated. Quantification was done by using gas chromatography-mass spectrometer (GC-MS). Faecal stanols (coprostanol and epi-coprostanol) and β-sitosterol were dominant in most STP samples. Groundwater samples were influenced by natural/biogenic sterol, while river water samples were characterized by a mixture of sources. Factor loadings from principal component analysis (PCA) defined fresh input of biogenic sterol and vascular plants (positive varimax factor (VF)1), aged/treated sewage sources (negative VF1), fresh- and less-treated sewage and domestic sources (positive VF2), biological sewage effluents (negative VF2), and fresh-treated sewage sources (VF3) in the samples. Association of VF loadings and factor score values illustrated the correlation of STP effluents and the input of biogenic and plant sterol sources in river and groundwater samples of Linggi. This study focuses on sterol distribution and its potential sources; these findings will aid in sewage assessment in the aquatic environment.
Clostridium bifermentans strain WYM is an effective biohydrogen producer isolated from landfill leachate sludge. Here, we present the assembly and annotation of its genome, which may provide further insights into the metabolic pathways involved in efficient biohydrogen production.
Clostridium perfringens strain JJC is an effective biohydrogen and biochemical producer that was isolated from landfill leachate sludge. Here, we present the assembly and annotation of its genome, which may provide further insights into the gene interactions involved in efficient biohydrogen production.
The increase of annual organic wastes generated worldwide has become a major problem for many countries since the mismanagement could bring about negative effects on the environment besides, being costly for an innocuous disposal. Recently, insect larvae have been investigated to valorize organic wastes. This entomoremediation approach is rising from the ability of the insect larvae to convert organic wastes into its biomass via assimilation process as catapulted by the natural demand to complete its lifecycle. Among the insect species, black soldier fly or Hermetia illucens is widely researched since the larvae can grow in various environments while being saprophagous in nature. Even though black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) can ingest various decay materials, some organic wastes such as sewage sludge or lignocellulosic wastes such as waste coconut endosperm are destitute of decent nutrients that could retard the BSFL growth. Hence, blending with nutrient-rich low-cost substrates such as palm kernel expeller, soybean curd residue, etc. is employed to fortify the nutritional contents of larval feeding substrates prior to administering to the BSFL. Alternatively, microbial fermentation can be adopted to breakdown the lignocellulosic wastes, exuding essential nutrients for growing BSFL. Upon reaching maturity, the BSFL can be harvested to serve as the protein and lipid feedstock. The larval protein can be made into insect meal for farmed animals, whilst the lipid source could be extracted and transesterified into larval biodiesel to cushion the global energy demands. Henceforth, this review presents the influence of various organic wastes introduced to feed BSFL, targeting to reduce wastes and producing biochemicals from mature larvae through entomoremediation. Modification of recalcitrant organic wastes via fermentation processes is also unveiled to ameliorate the BSFL growth. Lastly, the sustainable applications of harvested BSFL biomass are as well covered together with the immediate shortcomings that entail further researches.
Sludge and scales produced during oil and gas production contain enhanced naturally occurring
radioactive material (NORM). Sludge and scales are under the jurisdiction of Department of
Environment (DOE) and also Atomic Energy Licensing Board (AELB). AELB has issued a
guideline regarding the disposal of sludge and scales as in its guideline (LEM/TEK/30 SEM.2,
1996). In this guideline, Radiological Impact Assessment (RIA) should be carried out on all
proposed disposals and has to demonstrate that no member of public will be exposed to more than
1 mSv/y. This paper presented RIA analysis using RESRAD computer code for the disposal of
treated sludge. RESRAD (RESidual RADioactive) developed by Argonne National Laboratory is to
estimate radiation doses and risks from residual radioactive materials. The dose received by the
member of public is found to be well below the stipulated limit.