The flow pattern effects of hydrodynamic cavitation on waste activated sludge digestibility

Amr Mustafa Abdelrahman*, Seyedreza Tebyani, Farzad Rokhsar Talabazar, Saba Aghdam Tabar, Nastaran Rahimzadeh Berenji, Araz Sheibani Aghdam, Ismail Koyuncu, Ali Kosar, Huseyin Guven, Mustafa Evren Ersahin, Morteza Ghorbani*, Hale Ozgun

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The disintegration of raw sludge is of importance for enhancing biogas production and facilitates the degradation of substrates for microorganisms so that the efficiency of digestion can be increased. In this study, the effect of hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) as a pretreatment approach for waste activated sludge (WAS) was investigated at two upstream pressures (0.83 and 1.72 MPa) by using a milli-scale apparatus which makes sludge pass through an orifice with a restriction at the cross section of the flow. The HC probe made of polyether ether ketone (PEEK) material was tested using potassium iodide solution and it was made sure that cavitation occurred at the selected pressures. The analysis on chemical effects of HC bubbles collapse suggested that not only cavitation occurred at low upstream pressure, i.e., 0.83 MPa, but it also had high intensity at this pressure. The pretreatment results of HC implementation on WAS were also in agreement with the chemical characterization of HC collapse. Release of soluble organics and ammonium was observed in the treated samples, which proved the efficiency of the HC pretreatment. The methane production was improved during the digestion of the treated samples compared to the control one. The digestion of treated WAS sample at lower upstream pressure (0.83 MPa) resulted in higher methane production (128.4 mL CH4/g VS) compared to the treated sample at higher upstream pressure (119.1 mL CH4/g VS) and control sample (98.3 mL CH4/g VS). Thus, these results showed that the HC pretreatment for WAS led to a significant increase in methane production (up to 30.6%), which reveals the potential of HC in full-scale applications.

Original languageEnglish
Article number141949
JournalChemosphere
Volume357
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Elsevier Ltd

Keywords

  • Biomethane potential
  • Energy balance
  • Flow pattern
  • Hydrodynamic cavitation
  • Waste activated sludge

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