A new mechanical cutting pretreatment approach towards the improvement of primary sludge fermentation and anaerobic digestion

Xianbao Wang^a, Yili Xie^a

School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shaanxi University of Science and Technology, Xi'an, Shaanxi Province 710021, China.

Pretreatment technologies for improving the anaerobic digestion of waste activated sludge have been studied extensively; however, studies on the improvement of pretreatment technology for primary sludge (PS) fermentation and anaerobic digestion are scarce. In this study, a novel mechanical cutting pretreatment (MCP) method was proposed to enhance the performance of PS fermentation and anaerobic digestion. PS was disintegrated by MCP, the average particle size of PS reduced from 45.7 µm to 7.0 µm, and soluble COD (SCOD) increased by 1206 mg/L with pretreatment for 8 min. The hydrolysis and acidification of PS was promoted significantly by MCP. Compared with the control group, the production of SCOD and volatile fatty acids (VFAs) in the pretreatment group during sludge fermentation increased by 167% and 115.3%, respectively. The performance of PS anaerobic digestion was remarkably improved by MCP. The maximum cumulative biogas production in the pretreatment group was 3153 mL, which was 6.33 times that in the control group (498.5 mL). Sludge disintegration by mechanical pretreatment resulted in the enrichment of bacteria, especially Firmicutes, in the sludge fermentation system, and the quantity of bacteria in the pretreatment group was 1.95 times that in the control group. However, MCP had little effect on archaea in the anaerobic digestion of PS, and the methanogens in the control and pretreatment reactors were 1.493 × 109 and 1.519 × 109 copies/g, respectively.