Advanced Separation Technology for Sludge Wastewater Treatment and Resource Utilization

A special issue of Separations (ISSN 2297-8739). This special issue belongs to the section "Purification Technology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 10 November 2025 | Viewed by 243

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Interests: sludge dewatering coupled with pyrolysis resource utilization; high-efficiency silicon removal technology for reverse osmosis pretreatment

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As an inevitable by-product in the process of sewage treatment, sludge contains pathogens, heavy metals, organic pollutants, and other toxic substances. Its effective treatment and resource utilization are crucial for environmental protection and sustainable development. The composition of sludge is complex and variable, and the extracellular polymeric substances (EPSs) within it are highly hydrophilic and compressible, rendering the dewatering process particularly challenging. Therefore, developing efficient sludge dewatering technology has become a key means for alleviating the problem of rapid growth of sludge. At present, the deep dewatering technology of sludge mainly adopts high-pressure filtration chemical pretreatment, centrifugal dewatering, electroosmotic dewatering, and other methods. Different enhanced sludge dewatering technologies are suitable for treating specific types of sludge. Therefore, it is particularly important to choose the appropriate sludge dewatering technology for specific sludge properties and treatment scenarios, which is also the core theme of this Special Issue.

Dr. Bingdi Cao
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • sludge
  • solid–liquid separation
  • dewatering agent
  • extracellular polymeric substances (EPSs)
  • electro-dewatering
  • coagulants

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

15 pages, 3292 KB  
Article
Enhanced Electro-Dewatering of Sludge Through Inorganic Coagulant Pre-Conditioning
by Xiaoyin Yang, Song Huang, Yusong Zhang, Hanjun Wu, Yabin Ma and Bingdi Cao
Separations 2025, 12(10), 262; https://doi.org/10.3390/separations12100262 - 26 Sep 2025
Abstract
Sludge electro-dewatering technology is an attractive dewatering technology, but its application is limited by high energy consumption and filter cloth clogging caused by the dissolution of extracellular polymeric substances (EPSs). Thus, the addition of inorganic coagulants is expected to enhance the electro-dewatering efficiency [...] Read more.
Sludge electro-dewatering technology is an attractive dewatering technology, but its application is limited by high energy consumption and filter cloth clogging caused by the dissolution of extracellular polymeric substances (EPSs). Thus, the addition of inorganic coagulants is expected to enhance the electro-dewatering efficiency of waste activated sludge (WAS). In this study, we evaluated the effects of the three typical inorganic coagulants (HPAC, PAC, and FeCl3) on sludge electro-dewatering behavior. The results show that the electro-dewatering rate at the cathode was increased with the raising of the inorganic coagulants dosage, and FeCl3 exhibited the best effect on the improvement of sludge electro-dewatering among the three inorganic coagulants. The zeta potential of the sludge flocs and the electro-osmotic effect were raised with the increasing of the inorganic coagulants dosage. The sludge floc conditioned by FeCl3 is more compact than HPAC and PAC. Moreover, the dissolved EPS content reduced in the sludge electro-dewatering process when inorganic coagulant was added. In comparison to increasing ionic strength, the compression of extracellular polymeric substances (EPSs) plays a more critical role in enhancing the electro-dewatering process of sludge. The addition of inorganic coagulants also reduced the energy consumption during water removal in the electro-dewatering process. Full article
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