Ultrasonic sludge pretreatment under pressure

• Main ultrasound pretreatment process parameters were optimized.
• The effect of external pressure was investigated for the first time.
• At a given power, an optimum pressure was found regardless of specific energy input.
• High US power, adiabatic mode, and optimum pressure was the best combination.
• The process of sludge particle size reduction was much faster than COD extraction.

The objective of this work was to optimize the ultrasound (US) pretreatment of sludge. Three types of sewage sludge were examined: mixed, secondary and secondary after partial methanisation (“digested” sludge). Thereby, several main process parameters were varied separately or simultaneously: stirrer speed, total solid content of sludge (TS), thermal operating conditions (adiabatic vs. isothermal), ultrasonic power input (PUS), specific energy input (ES), and for the first time external pressure. This parametric study was mainly performed for the mixed sludge. Five different TS concentrations of sludge (12–36 g/L) were tested for different values of ES (7000–75,000 kJ/kgTS) and 28 g/L was found as the optimum value according to the solubilized chemical oxygen demand in the liquid phase (SCOD). PUS of 75–150 W was investigated under controlled temperature and the “high power input – short duration” procedure was the most effective at a given ES. The temperature increase in adiabatic US application significantly improved SCOD compared to isothermal conditions. With PUS of 150 W, the effect of external pressure was investigated in the range of 1–16 bar under isothermal and adiabatic conditions for two types of sludge: an optimum pressure of about 2 bar was found regardless of temperature conditions and ES values. Under isothermal conditions, the resulting improvement of sludge disintegration efficacy as compared to atmospheric pressure was by 22–67% and 26–37% for mixed and secondary sludge, respectively. Besides, mean particle diameter (D[4,3]) of the three sludge types decreased respectively from 408, 117, and 110 μm to about 94–97, 37–42, and 36–40 μm regardless of sonication conditions, and the size reduction process was much faster than COD extraction.