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The goal of this work was to study changes in anaerobically stored digested sludge under different lengths of storage time to evaluate the quality of final product biosolids. The analyses of collected data suggest the organic matter degradation occurrence in the anaerobic environment of the lagoon approximately within the first year. After that, the degradation becomes very slow, which is likely caused by unfavorable environmental conditions. The performance of lagoon aging of digested sludge was also compared to the performance of lagoon aging of anaerobically digested and dewatered sludge. It was concluded that both of these processes result in biosolids of comparative quality and that the former provides more economical solution to biosolids handling by eliminating the need for mechanical dewatering.

Recently, more and more wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are upgrading their conventional solids treatment systems which produce Class B biosolids to produce Class A biosolids. This trend has triggered rapid growth of not only new sludge treatment technologies but also conventional treatment modification technologies. The main focus of this paper is on anaerobic digestion process modification techniques to produce Class A biosolids or enhanced digestion to achieve multiple solids processing objectives. The paper is based on information collected from various WWTPs throughout the US on practices and trends to enhance sludge digestion, worldwide literature review, and from technology vendors. A systematic analysis (case studies) of 4 WWTPs to evaluate and shortlist alternatives to enhance the existing solids thickening-anaerobic digestion-dewatering complex into either Class A or enhanced solids processing system as well as estimation of the operational carbon footprint (OCF) of each of the alternatives are presented in this work.

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