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Alexandria, VA -- The Water Environment Research Foundation (WERF) will release research funding totaling $200,000 for the evaluation of current processes that could potentially reduce the generation of activated sludge solids. The project, Evaluation of Processes to Reduce Activated Sludge Solids Generation and Disposal (RFP No. 05-CTS-3), will attempt to provide industrial and municipal wastewater treatment facilities with effective tools to improve their current methods of generating and disposing waste activated sludge, resulting in substantial cost savings.
The tool to be developed will be based on demonstrations of commercially available processes and will assess the effectiveness of these processes to minimize generation and quantities of waste activated sludge (WAS) solids,improve mechanical dewatering of WAS, or improve destruction of WAS solids before dewatering, all with a strong emphasis on WAS-only sludges (i.e., excluding primary sludges).
The treatment and management of waste activated sludge, in general, is expensive and can represent 50% or more of the operating cost of wastewater treatment. By providing wastewater treatment facilties with a tool to evaluate and possibly implement today's most promising waste activated sludge management processes, this research could lead to a significant reduction in treatment facilities' operational costs. Although WERF research has addressed WAS generation and dewatering in the past, the cost analyses were not aimed at the higher costs of industrial WAS treatment. As a result, processes that appeared too costly for POTWs in North America were given very limited examination, although those processes might be cost-effective for industry.
In most cases, waste activated sludge mechanically dewaters more poorly than does primary sludge. For many industrial wastewater treatment plant cases only WAS is generated and its dewaterability can be worse than in municipal WWTPs. For example, while WAS from POTWs often can be mechanically dewatered to 20% cake solids or higher, WAS from in industrial systems sometimes will only dewater to 10·15% cake solids and at the same time demand higher doses of coagulants and flocculants. This behavior can make dewatering, as well as subsequent disposal of wetter cake, even more of a problem and be more costly for industrial plants.
Researchers interested in submitting a proposal for this project are encouraged to visit the WERF website for more information and a complete RFP at:
http://www.werf.org/funding/avail_funding.cfm
About WERF
The Water Environment Research Foundation (WERF) is a nonprofit organization that helps utilities and corporations preserve the water environment and protect human health by providing science and technology for enhanced management of our water resources.
Web: http://www.werf.org/
© Copyright 1998 - 2008 Water and Wastewater.com
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