Rethinking sewage treatment by enhancing primary settling with low-dosage lime

This work presents a thorough fractionation of COD in raw sewage, followed by pilot plant coagulation tests with low-dosage lime (pH 9). Through a physical separation (sieving and crossflow filtration) total COD in the raw sewage was partitioned among eight size fractions in the range of 150-0.02 microm. In addition, respirometric tests were performed to measure the biodegradability of the different size fractions. More than 60% of COD was associated with settleable and supracolloidal particles (size > 1 microm), which are characterised by slow biodegradability. Coagulation with lime increased COD removal efficiencies in the primary treatment from typical 30-35%, up to 65-70%, suggesting that lime may induce the almost complete removal of the slowly settling, slowly biodegradable supracolloidal particles in the primary treatment. On the basis of these results a non-conventional sewage treatment scheme is proposed, considering that there is plenty of space for improving primary treatment efficiency through sewage coagulation. Higher primary treatment efficiency may present several advantages, including lower aeration energy in the subsequent biological unit and higher energy recovery from sludge digestion.