Conditioning of oily sludges with municipal solid wastes incinerator fly ash

Conditioning of sludges improves dewatering characteristics and reduces the quantity of sludge to be handled. Anaerobic digested sludge collected from a sewage treatment plant contained 1.8% to 8% oil. The increase of specific resistance and capillary suction time (CST) with increasing oil content observed in these samples indicates the interference of oil in dewatering. It has been found that addition of municipal solid wastes incinerator fly ash decreases the specific resistances and capillary suction times of oily sludges rapidly up to 3% dosage. Beyond 3% fly ash, the decrease is less significant and the solids content in the sludge cake increases. This optimum dosage remains the same for sludges with varying oil contents from 1.8% to 12%. The total suspended solids of filtrate decreases with fly ash dosage but the toxic concentrations of heavy metals increases considerably. However at the optimum dosage of 3%, concentrations of heavy metals are within the limits for discharging into the sewers. The correlations of CST with the dewatering characteristics such as specific resistance, filter yield and corrected filter yield are established. These correlations can be used to obtain a quick prediction on dewaterability. (C) 1997 IAWQ. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.