Mechanisms for Reduced Excess Sludge Production in the Cannibal Process

Reducing excess sludge production is increasingly attractive as a result of rising costs and constraints with respect to sludge treatment and disposal. A technology in which the mechanisms remain not well understood is the Cannibal process, for which very low sludge yields have been reported. The objective of this work was to use modeling as a means to characterize excess sludge production at a full-scale Cannibal facility by providing a long sludge retention time and removing trash and grit by physical processes. The facility was characterized by using its historical data, from discussion with the staff and by conducting a sampling campaign to prepare a solids inventory and an overall mass balance. At the evaluated sludge retention time of 400 days, the sum of the daily loss of suspended solids to the effluent and of the waste activated sludge solids contributed approximately equally to the sum of solids that are wasted daily as trash and grit from the solids separation module. The overall sludge production was estimated to be 0.14 g total suspended solids produced/g chemical oxygen demand removed. The essential functions of the Cannibal process for the reduction of sludge production appear to be to remove trash and grit from the sludge by physical processes of microscreening and hydrocycloning, respectively, and to provide a long sludge retention time, which allows the slow degradation of the “unbiodegradable” influent particulate organics (XU,Inf) and the endogenous residue (XE). The high energy demand of 1.6 kWh/m3 of treated wastewater at the studied facility limits the niche of the Cannibal process to small- to medium-sized facilities in which sludge disposal costs are high but electricity costs are low.