Catalytic ozonation for sludge disintegration

Abstract

Processing and disposal of excess sludge is one of the most serious problem encountered in wastewater treatment in terms of environment, finance and technology. This project research studied the catalytic ozonation for sludge disintegration. The addition of zinc oxide (ZnO) as a catalyst in this experiment is to evaluate the performance of catalytic ozonation for disintegration of sludge from rubber industry sludge and to analyze the efficiency of ozone decomposition mechanism for catalytic and non-catalytic ozonation of sludge. Semi reactor batch is used and the total ozonation time is 20 minutes. The sludge is exposed to the ozonation process with and without the addition of ZnO. The performances of sludge disintegration are compared between catalytic ozonation and non-catalytic ozonation. The sludge disintegration increases as the ZnO being added into the experiment. Addition of ZnO reduces the sludge volume index, reduction of the concentration of total suspended solid, chemical oxygen demand and total solid. Furthermore, the mechanism of ozonation process is more efficient in catalytic ozonation as the sludge disintegration performance increasing compared to the noncatalytic ozonation. For conclusion, the performance of catalytic ozonation for sludge disintegration is improved and the efficiency of ozone decomposition mechanism for catalytic is better than the non-catalytic ozonation.