Environmental Technology

ISSN: 0959-3330 (Print) 1479-487X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tent20

Highly efficient secondary dewatering of

dewatered sewage sludge using low boiling point
solvents

Chao He, Chia-Lung Chen, Zhirong Xu & Jing-Yuan Wang

To cite this article: Chao He, Chia-Lung Chen, Zhirong Xu & Jing-Yuan Wang (2014) Highly
efficient secondary dewatering of dewatered sewage sludge using low boiling point solvents,
Environmental Technology, 35:1, 95-103, DOI: 10.1080/09593330.2013.812667

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09593330.2013.812667

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Jun 2013.
Published online: 02 Jul 2013.

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Environmental Technology, 2014
Vol. 35, No. 1, 95–103, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09593330.2013.812667

Highly efficient secondary dewatering of dewatered sewage sludge using low

boiling point solvents
Chao Hea,b , Chia-Lung Chena , Zhirong Xuc and Jing-Yuan Wanga,b∗
a Residuesand Resource Reclamation Centre, Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute, Nanyang Technological University,
1 Cleantech Loop, Singapore 637141, Singapore; b Division of Environmental and Water Resources Engineering, School of Civil and
Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798, Singapore; c Environmental
Science Research and Design Institute of Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310007, People’s Republic of China
(Received 27 November 2012; final version received 1 June 2013 )

Secondary dewatering of dewatered sludge is imperative to make conventional drying and incineration of sludge more
economically feasible. In this study, a secondary dewatering of dewatered sludge with selected solvents (i.e. acetone and
ethanol) followed by vacuum filtration and nature drying was investigated to achieve in-depth dewatering. After the entire
secondary dewatering process, the sludge was shown to be odourless and the organic matter content was greatly retained.
Increased mean particle size of sludge after solvent contact improved solid–liquid separation. With an acetone/sludge ratio
of 3:1 (mL:g) in solvent contact and subsequent nature drying at ambient temperature after 24 h, the moisture content of
sludge can be reduced to a level less than 20%. It is found that the polysaccharides were mainly precipitated by acetone,
whereas the release ratios of protein and DNA were increased significantly as the added acetone volumes were elevated.
During nature drying, accumulated evaporation rates of the sludge after solvent contact were 5–6 times higher than original
dewatered sludge. Furthermore, sludge after acetone contact had better nature drying performance than ethanol. The two-
stage dewatering involves solvent contact dewatering and solvent enhanced evaporation dewatering. Through selecting an
appropriate solvent/sludge ratio as well as economical solvents and minimizing the solvent loss in a closed-pilot system,
this dewatering process can be competitive in industrial applications. Therefore, this solvent-aided secondary dewatering is
an energy-saving technology for effective in-depth dewatering of dewatered sludge and subsequent sludge utilization.
Keywords: dewatered sewage sludge; solvent contact; effective dewatering; solvent evaporation; cell disruption

1. Introduction be lowered down in incineration. The latest bioleaching

Due to the increasing stringent regulations for the quality
of discharged water, the sludge production from wastewa-
ter treatment plants is soaring. The huge amount of sludge
generated will pose serious pollutions to environment if not
appropriately dealt with. Currently, drying and incineration
of sludge is widely applied for waste sludge treatment and
disposal. To optimize the entire sludge treatment process, a
better dewatering method prior to incineration is essential
in order to make this treatment process more economically
feasible.
Extensive studies have been focused on developing
technologies to improve the dewaterability of waste acti-
vated sludge before conventional dewatering, including
hydrothermal conditioning under an alkaline condition,[1]
chemical conditioning,[2,3] sonication,[4] combined chem-
ical and thermal treatment.[5] After these conventional
conditioning, the dewaterability of sludge determined by
specific resistance to filtration or capillary suction time was
promoted remarkably. Since inorganic substances are intro-
duced into the sludge, the heating value of sludge will
approach demonstrated better dewaterability and subse-
quent utilization of sludge with organic matter largely
retained.[6]
Water fractions inside sludge include free water, intersti-
tial water, vicinal water, and bound water.[7] Conventional
mechanical dewatering, such as centrifuge, filter press, and
belt press, can only remove the majority of free water
and interstitial water while it will not affect vicinal water
and bound water.[8] As a consequence, the water content
of dewatered sludge is generally 70–80%. Now that con-
ventional drying process of dewatered sludge consumes
considerable energy, dewatered sludge still has great poten-
tial for secondary dewatering before thermal drying and
incineration to further reduce the cost of sludge treat-
ment. Extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) is a major
component in sludge [9] and mainly consists of protein
(PN), polysaccharides (PS), small amounts of DNA and
lipids.[10] Most of the water in activated sludge is bonded
in EPS and EPS can hydrate water high up to 90%.[11]
In order to achieve in-depth dewatering, the attack of EPS

∗ Corresponding author. Email: jywang@ntu.edu.sg

© 2013 Taylor & Francis

96 C. He et al.
Table 1. Characteristics of the dewatered sludges from JXZ and LZ.
Moisture content (%) Organic matter content (%)
JXZ 73.9 ± 0.5 26.1 ± 0.4
LZ 84.7 ± 0.6 62.0 ± 0.7
and microorganism cells in sludge flocs is a necessity.[10]
The in-depth dewatering of dewatered sludge is still a
bottleneck for waste sludge management.
Previously, Münter and Gren [12] used solvent contact
as a pretreatment followed by press dewatering of peat to
strike a balance between the cost of mechanical dewater-
ing and thermal dewatering to obtain dry solids of a certain
dryness. Among all the solvents, acetone and ethanol exhib-
ited best performances in peat dewatering and were found
to improve dewaterability as a result of peat cell disrup-
tion. To avoid phase change of water, Miura et al. [13]
attempted to remove water in coal to achieve a moisture
content of less than 2% employing the tetralin extraction
method at 150◦ C. The mechanisms consisted of the release
of hydrogen bond of coal-water by thermal energy as well as
simultaneous dissolution and removal of water by a flow-
ing solvent. Though this dewatering process was proved
efficient for deep dewatering in terms of energy-saving and
dewatering efficiency, searching for a better solvent was
of great importance to commercialize this concept. Later,
Kanda et al. [14] made use of the unique physical proper-
ties of dimethyl ether (DME) (i.e. a normal boiling point
of −24.8◦ C, good water solubility and compressibility, and
free of environmentally harmful elements) and developed
an energy-saving dewatering technology for porous mate-
rials using liquefied DME. Given the energy consumption
in compression and pressure reactor construction, liquefied
DME dewatering may be further improved. In this context,
a dewatering process using solvents with low boiling point
and good water solubility was imperative to refrain from
the gas compression and pressurized system. Based on the
aforementioned literature, it is found that secondary dewa-
tering of dewatered sludge with the aid of solvent is scarcely
investigated.
Therefore, the main purpose of the present study was to
develop a solvent-aided secondary dewatering process for
dewatered sludge. The specific objectives included (1) the
feasibility and performance of solvent contact dewatering,
(2) the dewatering mechanism associated with components
released from sludge and the evaporation rate after solvent
contact, and (3) solvent consumptions minimization.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Dewatered sludge sample
The two types of dewatered sludge samples were collected
from Jiangxinzhou municipal wastewater treatment plant
in Nanjing, China (labelled ‘JXZ’ hereinafter) and Luzhi
pH TN (mg/g) TP (mg/g)
8.1 ± 0.1 12.6 ± 0.4 9.3 ± 0.3
7.6 ± 0.1 23.5 ± 0.2 24.2 ± 0.2
municipal wastewater treatment plant in Suzhou, China
(labelled ‘LZ’ hereinafter), respectively. The sludge sam-
ples were stored at 4◦ C and used as received. Characteristics
of the two dewatered sludge samples are given in Table 1.
2.2. Dewatering procedures
Figure 1 shows the schematic diagram for the secondary
dewatering process of dewatered sludge with the aid of a sol-
vent. Batch experiments of solvent contact were conducted
by mixing solvents and dewatered sludge. The mixture was
vigorously agitated in parafilm-covered beakers at 700 rpm
for 5 min under an ambient temperature. Two different sol-
vents (i.e. ethanol and acetone) were used. In general experi-
mental runs, a series of solvent volume/sludge weight ratios
(mL:g) were tested to determine the optimal solvent/sludge
ratio. For ethanol dewatering, solvent/sludge ratios (mL:g)
of 8:10, 10:10, 20:10, 30:10, 40:10, and 50:10 were selected.
For acetone dewatering, solvent/sludge ratios (mL:g) of
10:10, 15:10, 20:10, 30:10, 40:10, and 50:10 were used. In
some typical experiments, higher loadings of solvents and
sludges with fixed solvent/sludge ratios were carried out. In
addition, experiments of high loadings of acetone and JXZ
sludge with a series of solvent/sludge ratio (mL:g) (i.e.
60:40, 80:40, 100:40, 120:40, 160:40, and 200:40) were
conducted. During experiments for the minimization of
solvent consumption with a fixed solvent/sludge ratio, com-
bined solvents of fresh acetone+fresh ethanol and spend
acetone+fresh acetone were employed to test the perfor-
mance. The spend acetone was designated as the filtrate
after solvent contact.
After solvent contact, the mixture was subsequently
separated using a vacuum filtration apparatus through a pre-
weighted microfiltration filter paper with a vacuum pressure
of around −60 kPa for 15 min. The filtrate samples were
collected in sample vials and stored in a refrigerator at
4◦ C for further determinations of components released from
Figure 1. Schematic secondary dewatering process of dewatered
sludge with the aid of solvent pretreatment.
 Environmental Technology 97

dewatered sludge during the solvent dewatering. The solid
samples obtained were oven dried at 105◦ C overnight to
determine the moisture content of the solid residues. Given
the negligible contents of solvents retained in the sludge,
the weight of removed water was calculated by difference
of the moisture content in the original sludge and the sludge
after solvent dewatering.
To determine accumulated evaporation rates (AERs) of
original sludges and sludges after solvent contact, the nature
drying experiments were carried out by evenly placing 40 g
sludge in the porcelain plates of same size at an ambient
temperature in the laboratory for 24 h. The weather was fair
with an ambient temperature of 28 − 30◦ C and a humidity
of 70%. The wind speed was 3–5 m/s. The weight losses
after a series of standing times within 24 h were used to
calculate AERs.
The distillation experiment was carried out in a round-
bottom flask heated by a water bath at 70◦ C. The volume
of recovered solvent was used to calculate the recovery rate
and solvent loss for the solvent consumption analysis.
2.3. Analytical methods
Organic matter contents in the sludge were determined by
weight loss after combustion in a muffle furnace at 550◦ C
for 4 h. Approximately 2 g of the original JXZ dewatered
sludge and 20 mL deionized water were loaded in a cen-
trifuge tube and shaken for 48 h in a mechanical shaker at
an ambient temperature. The supernatant was separated for
analysis. The PN, PS, and DNA content in the supernatant
and filtrate samples were analysed in duplicate using chem-
icals of analytical grade. The PN was determined by the
modified Lowry method [15] with bovine serum albumin
as the standard. The PS was analysed using the Anthrone
method [16] with glucose as the standard. The DNA analysis
was conducted using the modified diphenylamine method
with calf thymus DNA sodium [17] as the standard. The
particle size distributions (PSDs) of the original dewatered
sludge and sludge after solvent dewatering were analysed
using the Mastersizer 2000 particle size analyzer (Malvern
Co., UK).
OriginPro version 8.5 was used for linear regression
analysis between weight of removed water and release ratios
of PS, PN, and DNA. The linear correlation was evaluated
by Pearson’s correlation coefficient (R). One-way analy-
sis of variance (ANOVA) was carried out to analyse the
statistical significance of the correlation at a 95% confidence
level (p < 0.05).
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Effect of solvent dewatering conditions
The moisture contents of the JXZ sludge and LZ sludge after
different solvent dewatering with a series of solvent/sludge
ratios are listed in Table 2. The moisture content tended to
decrease as the solvent/sludge ratio increased. In ethanol
dewatering, the moisture content was reduced from 74%
to around 50%. Acetone was better than ethanol in terms
of dewatering performance. The moisture content after
acetone dewatering could be lower than 20%. When the
solvent/sludge ratio (mL:g) reached 4:1, the moisture con-
tent would not reduce too much. Thus, from the perspectives
of the low moisture content in sludge and less solvent con-
sumption, the acetone/sludge ratio of 4:1 was the optimal
solvent dewatering condition. The high loadings of solvent
and sludge with the acetone/sludge ratio of 4:1 could fur-
ther reduce moisture content but there was a limit value,
which was 20% and 50% for JXZ sludge and LZ sludge,
respectively.
Figure 2(a) depicts the moisture contents and organic
matter contents under a series of high loading of
solvent/sludge ratios. The moisture content dropped

Table 2. Moisture contents of the sludges from JXZ and LZ after dewatering under varying solvent conditions.

Ethanol/Sludge (mL:g)
8:10 10:10 20:10 30:10 40:10 50:10

Moisture contenta (%) JXZ 69.8 62.0 57.7 57.2 49.2 47.2
Acetone/Sludge (mL:g)
10:10 15:10 20:10 30:10 40:10 50:10

Moisture contenta (%) JXZ 57.1 57.7 41.4 26.5 17.2 18.8
Acetone/Sludge (mL:g) = 4:1
120:30 160:40 200:50

Moisture contentb (%) JXZ 24.0 18.8 19.6

LZ 46.4 44.6 NA

Note: NA, not available.

a Moisture content was determined after 2 h of nature drying at room temperature.
b Moisture content was determined after 3 h of nature drying at room temperature.
98 C. He et al.
Figure 2. (a) Moisture contents and organic matter contents of JXZ sludge after dewatering with different solvent volumes (standing
time after dewatering is 2h) and (b) PSDs of JXZ dewatered sludge (DS-JXZ), JXZ sludge after dewatering using spend acetone (S-SA),
and JXZ sludge after dewatering using fresh acetone (S-FA).
sharply to a comparatively low level of 35% after dewa-
tering process. There was a loss of organic matter content,
but it was within 2%. The dewatering did not change the
organic matter content significantly. Thus, this dewatering
does not have much detrimental effect on the heating energy
of sludge in incineration. In addition, the odour of dewatered
sludge was eliminated because the volatile matter causing
odour was removed in solvent contact.
3.2. Evolution of PSD
Figure 2(b) shows the changes of PSD of JXZ sludge before
and after acetone dewatering. The PSD of JXZ sludge after
fresh acetone dewatering was significantly different from
that of original JXZ sludge while the PSD of JXZ sludge
after spend acetone dewatering did not present pronounced
evolution. Here, the D50 was used to describe the mean par-
ticle diameter by mass. D50 of the original JXZ dewatered
sludge was 25 μm. After solvent dewatering, D50 was 34
and 773 μm for spend acetone and fresh acetone treatment,
respectively. Karr and KeinathSource [18] claimed that PSD
has the greatest influence on the dewaterability among all
the properties of the sludge. Since the D50 of sludge after
fresh acetone dewatering was increased by almost 30-fold,
the vacuum separation of the liquid and solids was eas-
ier and could be accomplished within 5 min compared with
15 min for spend acetone dewatering. In particular, the fresh
acetone may provide more active sites to interact with EPS
and sludge cell. The dewaterability of dewatered sludge was
greatly enhanced due to solvent contact.
3.3. Effect of solvent volumes
Variations of the PS, PN, and DNA released from JXZ
sludge and DNA/PS ratios during the acetone dewatering
are described in Figure 3. In the supernatant of the origi-
nal JXZ sludge, the PS was the highest compared with PN
and DNA. Previous study implied that mechanical shaking
could not disrupt microorganism cells in the sludge flocs
and a centrifuge force of 4000 × g was used for the extrac-
tion of loosely bound EPS.[19] EPS in sludge flocs consists
of soluble EPS (slime) and bound EPS. The bound EPS is
composed of loosely bound EPS and tightly bound EPS.[20]
Moreover, PS can represent up to 65% in extracellular
substances, while PNs, nucleic acids and lipids are other
substances in the EPS.[21] Although PN is a major compo-
nent in sludge flocs, the distributions in different fractions
are different. According to the findings from Shao et al.,[22]
PN was mainly distributed in the pellet, less in the tightly
bound EPS and virtually not in the loosely bound EPS and
slime. However, PS was distributed evenly in different frac-
tions of the sludge flocs, whereas PN was embedded in
sludge pellet by the EPS matrix. In this regard, the small
portions of PN and DNA released and dissolved in the
supernatant may largely originate from EPS rather than the
microorganism cells in sludge flocs. In the present study,
after mechanical shaking, the PS content released from the
JXZ sludge in the supernatant was the highest, indicating
PS was a predominant component in the EPS of the JXZ
sludge. This result could be supported by the claim by Shao
et al.[22]
After the acetone contact process, evolutions of release
ratios of PS, PN, and DNA were altered significantly in
Figure 3. It is reported that the solvent mixture of acetone
and ethanol could successfully precipitate EPS dissolved
in the supernatant from the EPS extracted solution.[23] In
this study, PS, PN, and DNA can be precipitated in the
solvent contact process. As indicated in the mechanical
shaking experiments, PS was dominant in EPS, while a
large portion of PN and DNA existed in the intracellu-
lar substances. As the addition of solvent was increased,
the release ratio of PS increased gradually and PS was
subsequently precipitated. The release and precipitation
of PS reached a plateau after the acetone/sludge ratio of
100:40. Meanwhile, the cell disruption was accelerated as
the acetone/sludge ratio was increased. The PN and DNA in
 Environmental Technology
Figure 3. Release ratios (mg/g dry sludge) of PS, PN, and DNA in JXZ sludge with varying solvent volumes.
the intracellular substances were released and precipitated.
It is speculated that the release and precipitation of PS, PN,
and DNA were in a dynamic equilibrium. The more acetone
was added, the more PS, PN, and DNA could be released
and precipitated. As a consequence, the release ratios of PN
and DNA increased continuously, which may be ascribed
to the higher release rate than the precipitation rate. Sim-
ilar to PN, given a longer time and larger solvent/sludge
ratio, the release ratios of PN and DNA may achieve a
plateau as well. Since the main purpose of solvent con-
tact is to aid the secondary dewatering and the efficient
dewatering performance was achieved within the range of
solvent/sludge ratios investigated, further increase in the
acetone/sludge ratio is not necessary in order to make this
dewatering process as economical as possible.
The drastic increase in DNA indicated that the degree
of cell disruption was exacerbated. As energy storage of
carbon source, PS accounts for a small percentage in intra-
cellular substances.[24] After disruption of sludge cells,
plenty of DNA was released while the release of PS is
limited. Hence, the increase in DNA/PS ratio was in propor-
tional to the degree of cell disruption. The acetone/sludge
(mL/g) ratio of 200:40 gave the highest DNA/PS ratio.
The distribution of PN was mainly in sludge pellet and less
in tightly bound EPS.[22] Thus, the continuous increase
in release ratio of PN represented the exacerbated cell
disruption.
Therefore, it can be referred that acetone precipitated
the EPS in the sludge matrixes and the EPS was retained
in the solids during the solvent dewatering. Due to acetone
precipitation of most PS in sludge, PS released would not
change further along with the amount of acetone added,
99
which was stable at 0.3 mg/g dry sludge. In addition, the
release ratios of PN and DNA increased substantially with
the elevated acetone/sludge ratio, which was supposed to
be stable when higher acetone loading and longer contact
time were applied. Nevertheless, the highest release ratio
of PN and DNA was less than 1.0 mg/g dry sludge and
2.5 mg/g dry sludge, respectively. The release ratio of PS,
PN, and DNA can be used as indicators to evaluate the
performance of solvent contact, but the negligible release
amounts of PS, PN, and DNA will not be detrimental to the
organic matter content in dewatered sludge. This could be a
plausible reason to explain why the organic matter content
was not obviously changed.
Additionally, solvent is generally known to be toxic to
microbial cells by disruption of the microbial cell mem-
brane; however, solvent-tolerant bacteria with the presence
of various adaptive mechanisms has been reported.[25]
Further investigations on the reduction of viable bacterial
amount associated with this solvent dewatering process will
be valuable for the future application on sludge biological
sterilization.
Figure 4 displays the linear correlation between weight
of removed water and release ratio of PS, PN, and DNA.
As shown in Figure 4, release ratio of PN and DNA had
a pronounced positive correlation (R = 0.96, p < 0.01 and
R = 0.94, p < 0.05 for PN and DNA, respectively) with the
weight of removed water. On the contrary, release ratio of
PS was poorly correlated with the weight of removed water
(R = 0.42, p > 0.05).
During acetone contact, it was assumed that water in
EPS was firstly released and then the water in sludge cells
was released. As discussed in the previous section, though
100 C. He et al.

PS accounted for the majority part of the extracelluar sub-

stances, it could be precipitated by acetone during the
solvent contact. The moment acetone contacted with PS,
the water hydrated by PS was carried away by the solvents,
leaving the PS precipitated. Thus, the release ratio of PS
did not present linear correlation with water removed. In
this stage, PS contributed to most of the water removed.
Since the majority of PS existed in EPS, the PS released
during cell disruption would not contribute greatly to water
removal. In the next stage, as can been seen from results in
Figure 4, the removed water was mainly attributed to the
release of PN and DNA. Because solvents disrupted the cell,
PN and DNA were released from cells gradually. Initially,
PN in the EPS was denatured by acetone, thereby destroy-
ing hydrogen bond between PN and water to release water.
Then, PN in the inner fraction of sludge flocs released water
following the same principle. DNA was mainly distributed
in intracellular substances. It was an indicator of cell disrup-
tion. The water released from cells was therefore associated
with DNA released. Interestingly, compared with the salient
increase in release ratios of PN and DNA, the relatively low
increase in the removed water during solvent contact sug-
gested the water existing in intracellular substances was far
less than that in EPS.

3.4. Mechanism of solvent dewatering

Figure 5 shows the AERs profiles of original dewatered
sludge and sludge after acetone dewatering. As shown in
Figure 5, AERs of original dewatered sludge were signifi-
cantly different from that of sludge after acetone dewatering.
AERs of JXZ and LZ dewatered sludge presented a straight
line, while AERs of JXZ and LZ after acetone dewater-
ing increased exponentially in the initial 6 h and tended to
be gentle thereafter. During the initial 6 h, AERs of JXZ

Figure 5. AERs of JXZ dewatered sludge, LZ dewatered

sludge, JXZ sludge and LZ sludge after dewatering with an
acetone/sludge ratio of 160 mL: 40 g as a function of drying time.
Figure 4. Relationships between weight of removed water and MC represents the moisture content after 24 h of nature drying.
release ratio of PS, PN, and DNA.
 Environmental Technology 101

Table 3. Summary of moisture contents and retained organic matter content using three scenarios of solvent dewatering.

Acetone/Sludge (mL:g)= 3 : 1
Scenario 1 30:10 60:20 90:30 120:40 150:50

Standing time after dewatering (h) 12 12 12 12 12

Moisture content (%) JXZ 9.3 16.3 19.3 21.8 23.0
Organic matter content (%) JXZ 25.5 25.8 24.7 25.0 24.8
(Acetone + Ethanol)/Sludge = 120 mL: 40 g

Scenario 2 10 + 110:40 20 + 100:40 30 + 90:40 40 + 80:40 50 + 70:40 60 + 60:40 70 + 50:40

Standing time after 5 5 4.5 4.5 3.5 3.5 3

dewatering (h)
Moisture content JXZ 47.1 45.1 43.0 43.2 45.6 39.1 42.0
(%)
(Spend acetone + Fresh acetone)/Sludge = 120 mL: 40 g
Scenario 3 120 + 0:40 110 + 10:40 100 + 20:40 90 + 30:40

Standing time after dewatering (h) 2 24 24 24

Moisture content (%) JXZ 50.1 8.9 11.6 13.7
LZ 69.9 NA NA NA
Organic matter content (%) JXZ 24.4 25.0 24.3 24.2

Note: NA, not available.

and LZ sludge after solvent contact were 5–6 times higher
than the original dewatered sludge. It is evident that ace-
tone entrained moisture during the nature drying process.
The acetone-enhanced drying process occurred in the initial
6 h. Thereafter, the function of acetone was not pronounced
since acetone may be almost evaporated and the instan-
taneous evaporation rates (slopes of the curves) changed
to the levels of original sludge. Eventually, AERs of JXZ
and LZ dewatered sludge were 31% and 35%, respectively,
whereas AERs of JXZ and LZ sludge after acetone con-
tact were 61% and 69%, respectively. After a 24 h nature
drying process, the final moisture contents of JXZ and LZ
sludge after acetone contact were 13.56% and 40.50%,
respectively.
Although the moisture content of JXZ sludge after
ethanol and acetone contact was 48–50%, the solvent-
enhanced drying process was propitious to further reduce
the moisture content. Given that the final moisture content
in JXZ sludge was less than 20% after acetone contact, ace-
tone was suggested to perform much better than ethanol.
This difference can be explained by the boiling point of
these two solvents. The boiling point of acetone is 57◦ C,
which is much lower than 78◦ C of ethanol. Hence, even
under the same nature drying condition, acetone can entrain
water faster than ethanol.
Therefore, the mechanism of solvent-aided secondary
dewatering of dewatered sludge can be summarized into
a two-stage dewatering. This proposed dewatering pro-
cess involves first-stage dewatering during solvent con-
tact which can reduce moisture content to about 40%
and second-stage dewatering due to solvent-enhanced
evaporation which can further dewater the sludge to less
than 20%.
3.5. Solvent consumption minimization and analysis
Table 3 shows performances of three scenarios to mini-
mize the solvent consumptions during solvent dewatering.
From the perspectives of minimum solvent consumptions
and acceptable moisture contents in sludge after solvent
dewatering, a solvent/sludge (mL:g) ratio of 3:1 was
selected according to previous experiment results. Three
solvent compositions of acetone, acetone+ethanol, and
spend acetone+fresh acetone were performed in the solvent
dewatering, which was designated as scenario 1, scenario
2, and scenario 3, respectively. In scenario 1, when fresh
acetone was used, the moisture content was greatly reduced
after the dewatering. In particular, the moisture content was
lower than 10% under the acetone/sludge (mL:g) ratio of
30:10, which nearly reached the limit of moisture that can be
removed. More importantly, the losses of the organic matter
contents in sludges were only 1–2% for JXZ sludge. This
result indicates that the heating energy was significantly
retained and this solvent dewatering may be more suitable
for sludge with high original organic matter content. In
scenario 2, as the percentage of acetone in the mixture of
acetone+ethanol increased, the moisture content could be
reduced to 40% rapidly. Given that the difference was not
obvious and moisture content was around 40% after solvent
contact, scenario 2 was acceptable. In scenario 3, a small
amount of supplementary fresh acetone in the mixture of
spend acetone+fresh acetone could be effective for in-depth
102 C. He et al.
Table 4. Solvent consumption for secondary dewatering of sewage sludge based on three scenarios.
Expected moisture content (%)
Solvent/Sludge (mL:g)
Solvent Closed-pilot
loss scale (2%)
Solvent consumption Scenario 1 0.047(A)
(ton) per ton Scenario 2b 0.024(A) + 0.024(E)
dewatered sludge Scenario 3c 0.037(A)
Notes: A, Acetone; E, Ethanol.
a Volume/Weight ratio of 3:1 was equivalent to weight ratio of 2.37:1; Volume/Weight ratio of 2:1 was equivalent to weight ratio of 1.58:1
(ρethanol = 0.79 g/mL, ρacetone = 0.79 g/mL).
b Acetone:Ethanol = 1 : 1 was used in Scenario 2.
c The acetone percent in the spend acetone was approximately 70% according to laboratory distillation experiments.
dewatering, whereas using the spend acetone could not sat-
isfy the requirement of a relatively low moisture content. It
is concluded that all the three scenarios can be feasible for
in-depth dewatering provided that the solvents contained
fresh acetone, which implies that acetone waste may be
effective for solvent dewatering when certain amount of
fresh acetone can be provided.
Solvent consumptions of the proposed three scenarios
are calculated in Table 4. From results of the laboratory tests,
the expected moisture contents of solvent/sludge (mL:g)
ratio of 3:1 and 2:1 corresponded to 20% and 40%, respec-
tively, with the solvent loss of 10–15%. The solvent loss
of 15% was used for the calculation of maximum solvent
consumptions by tons per ton dewatered sludge. How-
ever, the solvent loss in a closed-pilot system should be
much lower. Referring to the solvent pretreatment of peat
dewatering,[12] a solvent loss of 2% was chosen here. Ace-
tone recovery rate in distillation experiments was 70%.
Based on all the assumptions, it can be seen from Table 4 that
minimization of solvent loss is a critical factor to make this
dewatering process a commercial one. In addition, the price
of acetone and ethanol is another concern in selecting dewa-
tering solvent compositions. To achieve a 40% moisture
content after the solvent-aided secondary dewatering, the
acceptable solvent consumption was 16 kg acetone+16 kg
ethanol/ton JXZ dewatered sludge and 28 kg acetone/ton
JXZ dewatered sludge under a closed-pilot scale (2% sol-
vent loss). The solvent consumption can be saved up to
30% when desired moisture contents can be compromised
in certain applications.
4. Conclusions
The moisture content of dewatered sludge can be further
reduced to less than 20% with the aid of solvent contact
followed by vacuum filtration and nature drying processes.
More importantly, the odours of sludge were eliminated and
organic matter content was significantly retained with a loss
less than 2%.
During the solvent contact process, the majority of
PS in EPS was precipitated at the acetone/sludge ratio
20% 40%
3:1a 2:1a
Bench scale Closed-pilot Bench scale
(15%) scale (2%) (15%)
0.35(A) 0.032(A) 0.24(A)
0.18(A) + 0.18(E) 0.016(A) + 0.016(E) 0.12(A) + 0.12(E)
0.28(A) 0.028(A) 0.21(A)
of 100:40 mL/g, while PN and DNA were released and
precipitated subsequently as increased acetone amount due
to the accelerated cell disruption. After solvent contact, a
30-fold increase in the mean particle size by mass signif-
icantly enhanced the dewaterability of dewatered sludge.
Though the removed water was linearly correlated with
release ratios of PN and DNA, it may be greatly attributed
to dehydration during PS precipitation in the initial stage.
When an acetone/sludge ratio of 3:1 was employed, the
two-stage dewatering reduced the moisture content in JXZ
sludge to 40% during the solvent contact process and
entrained water through solvent-enhanced evaporation to
achieve a final moisture content of 14%. Three solvents
scenarios turned out to be effective for in-depth dewater-
ing when fresh acetone could be supplemented. Based on
economic analysis of three proposed scenarios, solvent con-
sumption was 16 kg acetone+16 kg ethanol/ton JXZ dewa-
tered sludge and 28 kg acetone/ton JXZ dewatered sludge
to reduce moisture content from 74% to 40%. Therefore,
solvent-aided dewatering is an efficient and energy-saving
in-depth dewatering technology towards better reutilization
of dewatered sludge, which can be competitive in industrial
applications.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Zhuwei research team
(www.zhuweiteam.com) in Hohai University for providing the
facilities and resource during the experiments.
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