Iranian Journal of

Background and Objectives: A conventional treatment to stabilize the excess activated sludge is the aerobic digestion process but due to long aeration time, it requires large equipments as well as high investment cost. Because of high oxidation potential of ozone, sludge ozonation enhances stabilization rate and reduces sludge treatment equipment size and cost. Therefore, in this study, the combination of pretreatment with ozone and aerobic digestion processes were investigated.
Materials and Methods: The experimental set-up consisted of an ozone generator and ozonation reactor with the total volume of 2 L. Removal percentages of TSS, VS, total and soluble COD, HPC, fecal coliform and settable solids were measured in integrated process compared to the single ones.
Results: The results of this research indicated that the aerobic digestion of waste activated sludge during 10 days could reduce 38% of volatile solids and thus obtaining the EPA standard. Also, the results of combined ozonation and aerobic digestion revealed that the pre-ozonation at 0.25 g O3/g TS or 0.5 g O3/g TS with 6 or 3 days aeration, respectively, could achieve 38% reduction in VS and hence the requirement set by EPA. Therefore, integration of pre-ozonation with aerobic digestion can significantly reduce the digestion time to attain the standards.
Conclusion: The sludge pre-ozonation with low dose of ozone due to solids disintegration can enhance the efficiency of aerobic digestion in waste activated sludge stabilization, and consequently decrease size of equipments, air requirement, investment and probably operation cost.

Background and Objective: Nickel (II) and cadmium (II) are important in environmental pollutant. Biosorption of heavy metals can be an effective process for the removal and recovery of heavy metal ions from aqueous solutions because of the decrease in sludge problems, economical issues, high efficiency and compatibility with the environment.
Materials and Methods: power of wasted activated sludge have been contact with nickel (II) and cadmium (II) solutions in 0.25 and 0.75 milli molar invarious pHs and mixing pace, at 24-26 0C temperature on batch reactor system .After two hours (continuously 5-420 min in kinetic study) samples were analyzed with atomic absorption spectrophotometer.
Results:The kinetic study results show that equilibrium adsorption time for nickel (II) and cadmium
(II) reached within 2 hr, but the profile curve of cadmium (II) biosorption was smoother than nickel (II) biosorption. Both metals adsorption followed the Langmuir model and the maximum adsorption capacity (qmax) for nickel (II) and cadmium (II) was 0.195 and 0.37 milli mole per gram respectively. The increase in pH resulted in adsorption increase for both metals. For cadmium (II) at 0.25 and 0.75 mMinitial concentration there was no adsorption at pH 2 where as nickel (0.25 mM) adsorption was observed at the same pH. The optimum mixing rate for both metals was 200 rpm and this effect was more obviously in greater concentration.
Conclusion: Like othe biosorbents ,wasted activated sludge showed greater capacity for cadmium(II) biosorption than nickel (II). Cadmium (II) in modeling and biosorption characteristics study had more conformity than nickel (II).