Enhancement of activated sludge disintegration and dewaterability by Fenton process

Municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plants produce large amounts of sludge. This excess sludge is an inevitable drawback inherent to the activated sludge process. In this study, the waste activated sludge was obtained from the campus wastewater treatment plant at Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP), Malaysia. Fenton pretreatment was optimized by using the response surface methodology (RSM) to study the effects of three operating conditions including the dosage of H 2 O 2 (g H 2 O 2 /kg TS), the molar ratio of H 2 O 2 /Fe 2+ and reaction time. The optimum operating variables to achieve MLVSS removal 65%, CST reduction 28%, sCOD 11000 mg/L and EPS 500 mg/L were: 1000 g H 2 O 2 /kg TS, H 2 O 2 /Fe 2+ molar ratio 70 and reaction time 45 min. Fenton process was proved to be able to enhance the sludge disintegration and dewaterability.