Is there a significant increase in the amount of sludge produced in an activated sludge process when you achieve substantial nitrification vs when you treat it to just mean secondary effluent standards?
Wastewater treatment is an important infrastructure for especially major cities in order to improve water quality in water bodies. Many development has been going on to improve the quality of wastewater treatment, but unfortunately the more advanced the treatment usually the more energy required in order to produce better effluent quality. While the energy source such as fossil fuel is very limited and could deplete in near future,alternative source of energy is needed to be developed. Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP)commonly use 1% to 4% of city electricity which is one of the largest municipalities energy consumer. Themethod to recover energy in WWTP are reviewed and estimated. Currently, the best methods to recover energyare from utilization of biogas and biosolids which could potentially satisfy more than half of energy requiredfor WWTP. This report calculated that 70% of electricity needed in WWTP (477 GWh/year) could be satisfiedwith energy recovered in WWTP (340.95 GWh/year). In term of watt per capita basis, WWTP could providetotal energy of 8.7 Watts per capita. There is also Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) technology which could have big potential in recovering energy in wastewater, but MFC technology still faces major challenges in term of its efficiency. MFC is also reviewed and estimated based on recent available research.
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