Gravity Drainage of Activated Sludge on Reed Beds

Activated sludge is a by-product from waste water treatment plants, and the water content in the sludge is high (> 90%). Among several methods to remove the water, sludge drying reed beds are often used to dewater the sludge by drainage. There is, however, no well-defined criterion for design and operation of reed beds and the efficiencies are often lower than predicted. One reason is that the sludge quality varies from plant to plant and even within plants from time to time. No good method exists for measuring the sludge quality with respect to drainage characteristics. A new experimental method has therefore been developed to measure relevant quality parameters: specific cake resistance, settling velocity and cake compressibility. It has been found that activated sludge form highly compressible cake even at the low compressive pressures obtained during drainage. Numerical simulation shows that the compressibility has a high influence on the drainage process especially during the start-up phases where the volumetric load on the sludge bed is critical. The load has to be low in order to ensure that the drainage properties of the bed are not destroyed. The data also shows that transport of activated sludge from the wastewater treatment plant to the red beds may destroy the sludge structure and thereby reduces the dewaterability of sludge. Both the mechanical stress during pumping and anaerobic microbial activity affects the sludge quality. The quality of the sludge can be improved if I) the drying reed beds are placed close to the wastewater treatment plant, II) anaerobic condition is avoid e.g. by adding calcium nitrate, and III) the sludge structure is rebuild before it is poured on the reed bed e.g. by adding calcium carbonate