D 1.3: Compendium of best practices for advanced primary treatment

D 1.3: Compendium of best practices for advanced primary treatment

Producing more biogas from sludge digestion is one of the main factors to reach energy-neutral or energy-positive WWTP operation. In the project POWERSTEP a primary goal is to remove as much energy rich primary sludge as possible from the system prior to the biological treatment without having negative effects on downstream processes and effluent quality in terms of nitrogen removal. Within the project Work Package 1 addresses enhanced carbon extraction in primary treatment with different filtration technologies (drum and disc filters from Veolia Technologie AB - Hydrotech) tested in Case Study 1 (Westewitz, Germany) and 2 (Sjölunda, Sweden). To give scientific proof of the results and benchmark the performance against other competing technologies, process performance data has to be compared with other technologies used for primary treatment. In this report the results of literature research and comparison with data of case studies of full scale enhanced primary treatment units are shown and compared to each other. Specific indicators for the comparison are defined followed by identification of available alternative technologies for primary treatment at municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). These technologies are described by functionality, efficiency and operational data. Finally an overview of the results is presented in form of a fact sheet for primary treatment processes.