IWA Biofilms 2020 Virtual Conference
December 7-10, 2020
Could the treatment capacity of a continuous wastewater treatment plant be
increased with aerobic granular sludge?
Strubbe, L.*, Pennewaerde, M.*, Baeten, J.E.* and Volcke, E.I.P.*
*BioCo Research Group, Department of Green Chemistry and Technology, Ghent University, Coupure Links 653,
9000 Gent, Belgium, [Link]@[Link], [Link]@[Link], [Link]@[Link],
[Link]@[Link]
Keywords: aerobic granular sludge; continuous flow reactor; diffusion limitation
Summary of key findings
This study deals with the possibility of increasing the treatment capacity of a continuously operated
wastewater treatment plant for carbon and nitrogen removal by replacing activated sludge by aerobic
granular sludge. More specifically, it was investigated to which extent advantages related to better
settling characteristics of granular sludge are counteracted by its higher diffusion limitation. The effect
of better settling, allowing a higher biomass concentration in the reactor, was found to increase the
maximal treatment capacity with 40%. However, this positive effect was almost completely
counteracted by diffusion limitation in case the plant operation was left unchanged. The operation of
the continuous wastewater treatment plant with aerobic granular sludge could be optimized by
increasing the aerobic reactor volume, but keeping a lower oxygen set-point to increase the anoxic
volume in the granule, allowing simultaneous nitrification-denitrification. This optimized reactor
operation led to a 20% higher treatment capacity and a 10% lower energy consumption than for a
conventional activated sludge system.
Background and relevance
The treatment capacity of existing activated sludge plants needs to be increased due to higher loading
rates and more stringent effluent criteria in the future (Preisner et al., 2020). Replacement or extension
of existing water treatment plants is very expensive and sometimes impossible due to lack of space. A
bottleneck in increasing the capacity of activated sludge plants is the poor settling characteristics of
the activated sludge, i.e. the bacteria which carry out the biological conversions. As a result, large
settling tanks are required to separate the activated sludge from the treated effluent.
Aerobic granular sludge is a promising wastewater treatment technology, in which the bacteria grow
in compact, fast-settling granules, wich can be separated very efficiently from the purified water (de
Kreuk and van Loosdrecht, 2004). This results in compact installations which can have a 75% higher
treatment capacity for the same surface area. Moreover, energy consumption can be up to 50% lower
(Pronk et al., 2015). In newly built installations, aerobic granular sludge is implemented in batch
reactors, in which wastewater concentrations are relatively high and in which the growth process of
granules can be well controlled. Existing activated sludge plants, however, are mostly continuous flow
reactors, in which the wastewater concentrations are relatively low. Because of the clear advantages of
aerobic granular sludge, research worldwide is focused on how to get stable granules in a continuous
flow design (Kent et al., 2018). However, often only the better settling properties of aerobic granular
sludge emphasized, making abstraction of the increased diffusion resistance . In this contribution, the
question is asked whether replacing activated sludge with aerobic granular sludge in our current
continuous water treatment infrastructure is a good idea at all?
Results
The Matlab-Simulink model of the activated sludge section with ASM2d and settler described by
Solon et al. (2017) was used to simulate the continuous operation (Figure 1). The study assumed that
cultivation of aerobic granules with long-term stability in continuous plants is possible. Better settling
sludge was modelled with a five times higher settling velocity than activated sludge. Diffusion
limitation was modelled by increasing the apparent half-saturation coefficients (Baeten et al. 2018).
Figure 1: Reference case of a continuous activated sludge plant in an A2O configuration. Bioreactors 1
and 2 are anaerobic, 3 and 4 anoxic, 5, 6 and 7 aerobic. Qin: influent flow rate, Qeff: effluent flow rate , Qu:
underflow rate, Qr: recycle sludge flow rate, Qw: waste sludge flow rate, Qint: internal recycle flow rate,
KLai: oxygen transfer coefficient of bioreactor i, SO2,6: oxygen concentration in bioreactor 6, SO2,6,sp:
oxygen concentration set-point in bioreactor 6, XTSS,7: TSS concentration in bioreactor 7, XTSS,7,sp: TSS
concentration set-point in bioreactor 7.
Only considering the improved settling properties of aerobic granular sludge increased the maximum
treatment capacity of the water treatment plant by almost 40% (Figure 2 - 'better settling sludge').
However, taking into account the existing diffusion limitation resulted in a substantial negative effect.
In the aerobic granular sludge system where both better settling capacity and diffusion limitation were
taken into account, the maximum treatment capacity was only 7% higher than that of the original
activated sludge system. Moreover, this was at the expense of higher energy consumption, about 40%
more for aerobic granular sludge than for the original activated sludge system. This higher aeration
energy was because of the strong diffusion limitation due to the lower concentration of solutes in the
continuous flow reactor compared to batch reactors. As a result, more oxygen had to be added to allow
the required biological conversion reactions to proceed.
The operation of the water treatment plant was optimized next. The oxygen input into the various
reactor compartments was adjusted to make positive use of substrate gradients created by diffusion
limitation. More specifically, an anoxic environment for denitrification was created by keeping the
bulk oxygen concentration sufficiently low. As a result, simultaneous nitrification-denitrification was
realized and separate anoxic reactors were no longer required. This led to a 21% higher treatment
capacity, while the energy consumption was also 10% lower than in the conventional activated sludge
process. It is clear that a concomitant optimization of the reactor operation is essential to take full
advantage of aerobic granular sludge.
Figure 2: Maximal treatment capacity (left) and energy use (right) of a continuous plant for different
scenarios, i.e. the reference case with activated sludge (the reference case), the continuous plant with
better settling sludge, aerobic granular sludge and the optimized continuous plant for aerobic granular
sludge.
Discussion
The completely mixed operation conditions in most continuous configurations makes that the substrate
concentration in the reactor is everywhere and always as low as in the effluent. The lower substrate
concentrations result in lower substrate gradients in the granules and thus poor diffusion. Continuous
plug flow reactors might enhance diffusion limitation due to higher influent concentrations in the
beginning of the anaerobic phase (Sun et al., 2019). This design could positively influence the
treatment capacity.
The main conclusion is that diffusion limitation in continuous flow aerobic granular sludge reactor has
a significant influence, even though this property is often overlooked in aerobic granular sludge. For
the realization of continuous aerobic granular sludge systems in the future, one should therefore not
only pay attention to the growth and stabilization of the granules, but also take into account a much
larger diffusion limitation than in the typical batch reactors. It is advisable to keep the diffusion
limitation in continuous systems as small as possible through smart operational strategies and process
design.
The hopeful results show that if the operational strategies of the current continuous water treatment
plants is optimized, a significant improvement in treatment capacity and reduced energy consumption
can be realized. Additional optimization can be achieved, for example, by finding the particle size in
which there is a good balance between the advantages of better settling sludge and diffusion limitation.
Thanks to aerobic granular sludge, expensive expansion of existing wastewater treatment plants can be
avoided in certain cases and surface area can be saved. Further research will show exactly how to
design the continuous installation and companies to take full advantage of aerobic granular sludge.
Acknowledgements
The doctoral research work of Laurence Strubbe has been financially supported by a Doctoral fellowship
of the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) and by an FWO ERC runner-up project for Eveline
Volcke.
References
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Presenting Author
ir. Strubbe Laurence
Doctoral fellow of FWO
Ghent University
Is the presenting author an IWA Young Water Professional? Y/N
Bio: Laurence Strubbe is a Doctoral fellow of the Research Foundation –
Flanders (FWO) at Ghent University. Her research topic is optimal design
and control of aerobic granular sludge reactors for sustainable wastewater
treatment.