Integration of wastewater and OFMSW treatment cycles: from the pilot scaleexperiment to the industrial realisation - the new full scale plant of Treviso (Italy)

The paper presents the results from experiments on pilot scale plants conce rning the possibility to integrate the organic waste and wastewater treatme nt cycles, using the light organic fraction produced via anaerobic fermenta tion of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste as a readily biodegra dable organic carbon source for biological nutrient removal processes: the addition of the effluent from the fermentation unit as an external carbon s ource allows nitrogen and phosphorus removal of about 70-80% and the values of the affluent are in accordance with EC 271/91 Directive discharge limit s. Maximal denitrification rate with fermenter effluent addition shows valu es close to those typical of pure methanol addition (0.3 kg N-NO3/kg VSS d) and double those obtained by primary settled sludges elutriate addition (0 .14 kg N-NO3/kg VSS d). A full scale application of the approach (70,000 IP E), operating since July 1999 in northern Italy, is presented and an ASM 2 simulation is used to verify the behaviour of the whole real process.