The origin of waste activated sludge affects the enhancement of anaerobic digestion by free nitrous acid pre-treatment

Anaerobic digestion is a common stabilization method for treating primary sludge (PS) and waste activated sludge (WAS). However, its application is often limited by the degradation of WAS. Recent studies have demonstrated FNA to be an effective pre-treatment for enhancing WAS degradability, while having limited effect on PS degradability. WAS characteristics are impacted by wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) configuration and this study is the first to compare the effectiveness of FNA pre-treatment on WAS from WWTP with and without primary treatment. In this study, WAS samples were collected from four full-scale WWTPs with or without primary treatment. Sludge characterization, biomethane potential tests and mathematical modeling were conducted to assess the impacts of FNA pre-treatment on anaerobic digestion. The results showed that FNA pre-treatment was consistently effective for WAS from different WWTPs, while the extent of enhancement varied between WWTPs. For WAS from WWTPs without primary treatment, FNA pretreatment increased the rate of hydrolysis by 54–66% compared to 22–33% increase for WAS without primary treatment. In contrast, WAS from WWTPs with primary treatment experienced greater increases in methane potential (22–24%) compared to WAS from WWTPs without primary treatment (14–16%). These variances could be associated with primary treatment impacting the wastewater COD/N ratio and thus portion of extracellular polymetric substances (EPS) and cells in WAS. FNA pre-treatment targets the destruction of polymetric substances and cells, therefore WAS with a higher proportion of cells (i.e., WAS with primary treatment) experienced greater improvements in methane yield. Similarly, greater improvements in hydrolysis rate were observed for WAS from WWTP without primary sedimentation which contain higher proportions of large EPS molecules. Despite its consistent effectiveness on WAS samples, FNA pre-treatment was ineffective for improving the digestibility of high-rate activated sludge (HRAS). [Display omitted] •FNA pretreatment is effective for WAS of different origins while to different degree.•WAS of WWTPs without primary treatment experienced more hydrolysis increase•WAS of WWTPs with primary treatment saw more biomethane potential improvement.•Enhancement by FNA with WAS might be affected by wastewater COD/N ratio.•FNA pre-treatment is ineffective for HRAS sludge with SRT of 1 day.