During wastewater treatment, sludge is produced in vast amounts. Due to high volume generated in wastewater treatment plants, sludge management consists of 30-40% of capital cost and approximately 50% of operating cost of the plants. In addition, sludge can be an important source to contaminate the environment. For these reasons sustainable sludge management approaches are critical. Anaerobic digestion is one of the sustainable processes for sludge management since sludge volume is reduced during the process and useable energy is produced. For the enhancement of rather slow step of anaerobic digestion, hydrolysis, disintegration processes can be added prior to digestion. These processes also increase biogas production and decrease sludge volume further. Thermal hydrolysis is a disintegration method which is becoming widely applied worldwide. In this research, three different types of sludge namely, a conventional municipal wastewater treatment plant sludge, a membrane bioreactor (MBR) sludge and an organized industrial district sludge will be subjected to thermal pretreatment under varying conditions including low and high temperatures.  Following treatment with thermal hydrolysis, biochemical methane potential (BMP) reactors will be established for best conditions experienced for all types of sludges to find out the improvements. Methane production, sludge reduction and sludge characteristics will be fully investigated on these reactors.

By: Ece Arı

Advisor: Prof. Dr. F. Dilek Sanin

Date: 10.04.2019