Kinetics of aerobic cellulose degradation in raw municipal wastewater

Mingu Kim; Moustafa Elbahrawi; Azardokht Aryaei; George Nakhla; Domenico Santoro; Damien J Batstone

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.149852

Kinetics of aerobic cellulose degradation in raw municipal wastewater

Sci Total Environ. 2022 Jan 1:802:149852. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.149852. Epub 2021 Aug 24.

Authors

Mingu Kim¹, Moustafa Elbahrawi², Azardokht Aryaei¹, George Nakhla³, Domenico Santoro⁴, Damien J Batstone⁵

Affiliations

¹ Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada.
² Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada.
³ Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada; Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada. Electronic address: gnakhla@uwo.ca.
⁴ UPS Technologies, 3020 Gore Rd, London, Ontario, Canada.
⁵ Advanced Water Management Centre, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.

PMID: 34461471
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.149852

Abstract

Cellulose contributes approximately one third of the influent suspended solids to wastewater treatment plants and is a key target for resource recovery. This study investigated the temperature impact on biological aerobic degradation of cellulose in laboratory-scale sequencing batch reactors (SBR) at four different temperatures (10-33 °C) and two different solids retention times (SRT) of 15 days and 3 days. The degradation efficiency of cellulose was observed to increase with temperature and was slightly dependent on SRT (80%-90% at an SRT of 15 days, and 78%-85% at an SRT of 3 days). Hydrolysis followed 1st order kinetics, rather than the biomass dependent Contois kinetics (default in the activated sludge models), with a hydrolysis coefficient at 20 °C of 1.14 ± 0.01 day^-1.

Keywords: Cellulose degradation; Hydrolysis rate; Kinetics; SRT effect; Temperature correction factor; Temperature effect.

MeSH terms

Bioreactors*
Cellulose
Kinetics
Sewage
Waste Disposal, Fluid
Wastewater*

Substances

Sewage
Waste Water
Cellulose