Enhancing volatile fatty acid production from sewage sludge in batch fermentation tests

Antonio Mineo; Ylenia Di Leto; Alida Cosenza; Fanny Claire Capri; Giuseppe Gallo; Rosa Alduina; Bing-Jie Ni; Giorgio Mannina

doi:10.1016/j.chemosphere.2023.140859

Enhancing volatile fatty acid production from sewage sludge in batch fermentation tests

Chemosphere. 2024 Feb:349:140859. doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2023.140859. Epub 2023 Dec 2.

Authors

Antonio Mineo¹, Ylenia Di Leto², Alida Cosenza¹, Fanny Claire Capri², Giuseppe Gallo², Rosa Alduina², Bing-Jie Ni³, Giorgio Mannina⁴

Affiliations

¹ Engineering Department, Palermo University, Viale delle Scienze, ed. 8, Palermo, Italy.
² Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technologies, Palermo University, Viale delle Scienze, ed. 16, Palermo, Italy.
³ School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Centre for Technology in Water and Wastewater, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2007, Australia.
⁴ Engineering Department, Palermo University, Viale delle Scienze, ed. 8, Palermo, Italy. Electronic address: giorgio.mannina@unipa.it.

PMID: 38048828
DOI: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2023.140859

Abstract

Volatile fatty acids (VFA) from sewage sludge represent an excellent recovered resource from wastewater treatment. This study investigated four sludge pre-treatments (namely, potassium permanganate - KMnO₄, initial pH = 10, initial pH = 2.5 and low-temperature thermal hydrolysis) by operating batch reactors under acidogenic fermentation conditions. Results revealed that 0.1 g KMnO₄/g of total suspended solids represents the best pre-treatment obtaining up to 2713 mgCOD L^-1 and 452 mgCOD/g of volatile suspended solids. These results also paralleled metataxonomic analysis highlighting changes in prokaryotic microbial structures of sewage sludge of the batch fermentations subjected to the different pre-treatments.

Keywords: Acids; Circular economy; Fermentation; Metataxonomic approach; Resource recovery from wastewater; Sewage sludge.

MeSH terms

Bioreactors*
Fatty Acids, Volatile
Fermentation
Hydrogen-Ion Concentration
Hydrolysis
Sewage* / chemistry

Substances

Sewage
Fatty Acids, Volatile