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Wastewater discharged from industrial activities must
be purified for environmental protection before being
released into public waters such as rivers. As a representative
example of these purification technologies, the
activated sludge method is broadly used. The activated
sludge method is a technology to remove organic water
pollutants contained in wastewater through the respiratory
and breeding activities of aerobic microbes. It activates
energy conversion of organic matter through respiration
and material conversion to microbial fungus bodies
or the high-molecular materials they secrete. Although
microbial flocks needed for purification are maintained
through breeding, surplus microbes in the form of sludge
must be drawn outside the system and purified separately.
As 50 million tons of this surplus sludge are produced
every year in Japan, there is an urgent need to suppress
such surplus sludge in order to protect the global environment.
This paper introduces a new technology developed
to suppress the production of surplus sludge by simply
adding a new system to existing activated sludge facilities. |
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