Master thesis: Primary sludge hydrolysis for sustainable wastewater proc...

Doing your master thesis with us at IVL gives you the opportunity to get a unique insight into our research and our work. It's a chance to learn a lot more in your field of study. We welcome master thesis students every semester.

About the master thesis
Background
Nitrogen removal from wastewater is accomplished by combination of biological processes of nitrification and denitrification. For denitrification, carbon source is needed to reduce nitrate to nitrogen gas. Coming stringent requirements on nitrogen removal are motivating for using post-denitrification as a polishing step of nitrogen removal. Post-denitrification relies on supply of external carbon source, often methanol produced from fossil origin oil and gas. The need for external carbon is especially high for diluted wastewater that has a low content of readily biodegradable organic substrate.
Phosphorus removal in Sweden is often accomplished by chemical precipitation. Biological phosphorus removal is however an interesting option since it does not rely on supply of precipitation chemicals and allows for easier phosphorus recovery. Biological phosphorus removal requires presence of readily available organic substrate in form of volatile fatty acids (VFA).

Carbon source for effective nitrogen and phosphorus removal can be produced by hydrolyzing/fermenting primary sludge. The process has been tested at a temperature of 36 C (with heating) in previous IVL projects and at ambient temperature in a project led by Sweden Water Research and Tekniska Verken in Linköping.

Project description
The aim of the project is to:
Investigate the influence of temperature on VFA production by hydrolysis
Investigate the influence of hydraulic retention time on VFA production
Select the optimum combination of temperature and hydraulic retention time for maximizing the VFA yield while minimizing the energy requirement

The work is to be performed experimentally using bench scale reactors. Several sets of tests are to be performed, data analyzed and compared to the literature values. Possibly even several trials testing the produced carbon source can be performed. The work will be performed at Sjöstadsverket Water Innovation Center (SWIC), located in Stockholm.

Contact
For questions, please contact:

Andriy Malovanyy
Tel nr 072 453 71 32
andriy.malovanyy@ivl.se

Interested?
Submit your interest by clicking on "Registration of interest".