Sludge Watch ==> WERF Seeks Proposals for Activated Sludge

[maureen.reilly at sympatico.ca]

>From Water and Wastewater.com

Industry News
WERF Seeks Proposals for Activated Sludge
By The Water Environment Research Foundation
Jun 8, 2006, 05:23




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