The Potential of Anaerobic Digestion combined with Dissolved Air Flotation (AD-DAF) for Wastewater Treatment

In the context of a worldwide scenario characterized by a progressively expanding human population, the combining effects of climate change, escalating water stress, and the degradation of freshwater resources, water reclamation has emerged as a viable solution to alleviate the critical issue of water scarcity. Several streams around the world...

Conversion of Polymeric Substrates by Aerobic Granular Sludge

Domestic wastewater is treated prior to its return to natural water bodies, to minimize its polluting effect. Biological wastewater treatment removes organic matter and nutrients from the wastewater, by employing the activity of microorganisms, which consume polluting compounds present in wastewater to grow. One of such technologies is aerobic...

Maximisation of energy recovery from waste activated sludge via mild-temperature and oxidative pre-treatment

The overall objective of the present study was to investigate the effects of thermal pre-treatment of waste activated sludge (WAS) at 70 °C with addition of H₂O₂ to enhance sludge hydrolysis and subsequent methane production during WAS anaerobic digestion. The research was divided into four parts: Firstly, a bibliographical...

Diffusion in Aerobic Granular Sludge

A large part of the wastewater produced worldwide is discharged without any treatment. This has several negative consequences, including the spread of diseases and contamination of the environment. One method to treat wastewater is called aerobic granular sludge (AGS), an advanced, compact technology that uses granules. Granules are spherical...

Characterisation of Sludge Rheology and Sludge Mixing in Gas-mixed Anaerobic Digesters

Excess sludge handling is as important as treating the wastewater in determining the operational performance and costs in modern municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). In practice, excess sludge handling is widely implemented using anaerobic digestion (AD), in which the organic matter inside the sludge is not only stabilised and partly...

Unravelling the hydrolytic activity of sludge degrading aquatic worms

The overall objective of this thesis was to investigate ways to improve the extent and rate of waste activated sludge (WAS) hydrolysis by researching the WAS degrading activities and mechanisms of the aquatic worm Tubifex tubifex (T. tubifex) as a starting point. The WAS degrading aquatic worms were taken as a model “biochemical reactor” of...