RT Journal Article
T1 Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) Production: A Feasible Economic Option for the Treatment of Sewage Sludge in Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plants?
A1 Crutchik, Dafne
A1 Franchi, Óscar
A1 Caminos, Luis
A1 Jeison, David
A1 Belmonte, Marisol
A1 Pedrouso Fuentes, Alba
A1 Val del Río, Ángeles
A1 Mosquera Corral, Anuska
A1 Campos Gómez, José Luis
K1 Anaerobic digestion
K1 Bioplastics
K1 Economic analysis
K1 Methane
K1 Resource recovery
K1 Sewage sludge
K1 WWTP size
AB Sludge is a by-product of municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and its management contributes significantly to the operating costs. Large WWTPs usually have anaerobic sludge digesters to valorize sludge as methane and to reduce its mass. However, the low methane market price opens the possibility for generating other high value-added products from the organic matter in sludge, such as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs). In this work, the economic feasibility of retrofitting two types of WWTPs to convert them into biofactories of crude PHAs was studied. Two cases were analyzed: (a) a large WWTP with anaerobic sludge digestion; and (b) a small WWTP where sludge is only dewatered. In a two-stage PHA-production system (biomass enrichment plus PHAs accumulation), the minimum PHAs cost would be 1.26 and 2.26 US$/kg PHA-crude for the large and small WWTPs, respectively. In a single-stage process, where a fraction of the secondary sludge (25%) is directly used to accumulate PHAs, the production costs would decrease by around 15.9% (small WWTPs) and 19.0% (large WWTPs), since capital costs associated with bioreactors decrease. Sensitivity analysis showed that the PHA/COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand) yield is the most crucial parameter affecting the production costs. The energy, methane, and sludge management prices also have an essential effect on the production costs, and their effect depends on the WWTP’s size
PB MDPI
YR 2020
FD 2020
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/22556
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/22556
LA eng
NO Crutchik, D.; Franchi, O.; Caminos, L.; Jeison, D.; Belmonte, M.; Pedrouso, A.; Val del Rio, A.; Mosquera-Corral, A.; Campos, J.L. Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) Production: A Feasible Economic Option for the Treatment of Sewage Sludge in Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plants? Water 2020, 12, 1118
NO This research was funded by the Chilean Government through the Projects FONDECYT 1200850 and CRHIAM Centre grant number ANID/FONDAP/15130015. This research was also supported by the Spanish Government (AEI) through the TREASURE project (CTQ2017-83225-C2-1-R). Authors from USC belong to the Galician Competitive Research Group ED431C 2017/29. All these programs are co-funded by FEDER (EU)
DS Minerva
RD 23 abr 2026