Weight and volume reduction of organic sludges and enhanced recovery of biomass resources using sonophotocatalysis

Abstract

The efficiency of sonophotocatalysis, a pretreatment process involving ultrasonic irradiation and photocatalysis, in decreasing the emission amount of sewage sludge and enhancing the recovery of valuable materials, was investigated experimentally. The results indicated a 50% reduction in the sewage sludge emission after sonophotocatalysis was carried out for 2 h. In addition, the recovery ratio of methane gas by anaerobic digestion and dissolved phosphorus were 1.7 and 2.5 times more than those of methane and phosphorus in the recovery process without pretreatment, respectively.

Keywords

• sewage sludge
• pretreatment process
• sonophotocatalysis
• enhanced recovery
• methane gas
• phosphorus