Effect of process parameters on the energy requirement in ultrasonical treatment of waste sludge

Mechanical treatment methods are used as pre-treatment methods in order to enhance the efficiency of conventional sludge treatment processes and the sludge becomes more suitable for its complete treatment. The ultrasound is an alternative method among other methods, but because of its high energy requirement it should be optimized before utilization. This work gives the optimized parameters such as sonication time, sonication power (these parameters are the two factors which play part for energy calculations), type of sludge, cooling requirements and solid content in the sludge solution. Even if the previous researchers prefer to use the energy (specific energy usually), we have found out that both the sonication time and the sonication power have individual importance. For municipal sludge the main conclusion can be summarized as: “high power-short retention time” is more effective than “low power-long retention time”. As this phenomenon may alter from sludge to sludge, various combinations of power and retention time should be tried while keeping the volume small and the concentration below a certain level. The process should be performed at moderate temperatures and the efficiency increases if the sludge is as homogeneous as possible.