Enhanced methane production from anaerobic digestion of waste activated sludge through preliminary pretreatment using calcium hypochlorite.

Methane recovery from waste activated sludge (WAS) through anaerobic digestion is generally restricted by the poor degradability of WAS. Herein, a novel sludge pretreatment technology by using the calcium hypochlorite (Ca(ClO)) in enhancing the methane production from WAS anaerobic digestion was reported. The solubilization of WAS was significantly increased after 10-240 mg Ca(ClO)/g VS (VS: volatile solids) pretreatment for 48 h, under which the solubilization was 1.7-3.4 folds (i.e., 0.17-0.34 mg SCOD/mg VS; SCOD: soluble chemical oxygen demand) higher than that without Ca(ClO) pretreatment (i.e., 0.1 mg SCOD/mg VS). Correspondingly, the methane production was increased from 250.0 ± 5.3 mL/g VS to 385.1 ± 3.3 mL/g VS with the doses of Ca(ClO) increasing from 10 mg/g VS to 240 mg/g VS, resulted in an increasing methane production of 3.6%-59.7% than that without Ca(ClO) pretreatment. The microbial community composition results exhibited that the populations of key acidogens (e.g., Longilinea sp.) and methanogens (e.g., Methanosaeta sp.) were both reduced significantly. Moreover, Ca(ClO) decreased the cells viability, leading to a 76.2% reduction of living cells fraction. Accordingly, it was further confirmed that high dosage of Ca(ClO) could inhibit three microbial-related processes relevant to methane production, i.e., acidification, hydrolysis and methanogenesis.