Occurrence, effect, and fate of residual microplastics in anaerobic digestion of waste activated sludge: A state-of-the-art review.

The plastic products have large consumption over last decades, resulting in a serious microplastics (MPs) pollution. Specially, the main removal way of MPs from wastewater is to transfer MPs from liquid to solid phase, leading to its enrichment in waste activated sludge (WAS). Anaerobic digestion has been served as the most potential technique to achieve both resource recovery and sludge reduction, herein this review provides current information on occurrence, effect, and fate of MPs in anaerobic digestion of WAS. The effects of MPs on WAS anaerobic digestion are greatly related to forms, particles sizes, contents, compositions and leachates of MPs. Also, the presence of MPs not only can change the effects of other pollutants on anaerobic digestion of WAS, but also can affect the fates of them. Besides, the future perspectives focused on the fate, effect and final removal of MPs during WAS anaerobic digestion process are outlined.

Role of extracellular polymeric substances in enhancement of phosphorus release from waste activated sludge by rhamnolipid addition.

This study investigated the role of extracellular polymeric substances (EPSs) in enhanced performance of phosphorus (P) release from waste activated sludge (WAS) by adding rhamnolipid (RL). Results showed that compared to WAS without pretreatment, the released PO4(3-)-P increased with RL addition from 0 to 0.2 g/gTSS (total suspended solid), and increased by 208% under the optimal condition (0.1 g RL/g TSS and 72-h fermentation time). The cumulative PO4(3-)-P was better fitted with pseudo-first-order kinetic model. Moreover, the contents of metal ions increased in liquid but decreased in EPSs linearly with RL addition increasing, and WAS solubilizations were positively correlated with the released metal ions. The enhanced total dissolved P mainly came from cells and others (69.39%, 2.27-fold higher than that from EPSs), and PO4(3-)-P was the main species in both liquid and loosely bound EPSs, but organic P should be non-negligible in tightly bound EPSs.

Performance and model of a novel multi-sparger multi-stage airlift loop membrane bioreactor to treat high-strength 7-ACA pharmaceutical wastewater: effect of hydraulic retention time, temperature and pH.

In this study, three novel multi-sparger multi-stage airlift loop membrane bioreactors (Ms(2)ALMBRs) were set up in parallel for treating synthetic high-strength 7-ACA pharmaceutical wastewater under different HRTs, temperatures and pHs, respectively. During the 200-day operating time, average COD removal efficiencies were 94.96%, 96.05% and 93.9%. While average 7-ACA removal efficiencies were 66.44%, 59.04% and 59.60%, respectively. The optimal conditions were 10h, 15-35°C and 7-9 for HRT, temperature and pH, respectively. Moreover, the sludge characteristics and microorganism drug-resistances were explored. Results showed that different temperatures and pHs influenced contaminant removals by affecting MLSS concentration and ß-lactamase activity significantly. In addition, mathematical statistical models, built on the polynomial and linear regression techniques, were developed for exploring the inner relationships between HRT, temperature and pH changes and MLSS concentrations, ß-lactamase activities and contaminant removals of the Ms(2)ALMBR system.