Impacts and Solutions of Starch on Activated Sludge Treatment

Abstract

Starch is considered one of the main factors in recent increase of drainage load.
In the stock preparation, the paper-making system, and the effluent treatment process, the metabolic activity of the microbes which utilize starch have great influence on the productivity of paper mills.
Starch is degraded by enzymatic activity of amylase, and metabolically converted to reserve substances or extracellular polysaccharides of activated sludge.
Accumulation of reserve substances bring about aggravation of the treated water quality due to the decrease in substrate removal speed of activated sludge, and superfluous generation of extracellular polysaccharides cause foaming and deteriorated sedimentation property.
In this report, we demonstrated that continuous use of starch in paper-making system, especially raw starch, greatly influence on activated sludge process.
So, we introduce the optimization of the paper making chemicals of a paper-making system which raises the yield of starch and reduces drainage load, and the microbial preparation“MC series”which improves activated sludge ability.
It should be essential for paper manufacture industry, which aims at saving resources and cost, to take measure against starch load of the effluent treatment.
In this paper, analysis detailed about a paper-forming process is conducted, and the influence which increase of the drainage load by starch has to activated sludge processing, and its measure are introduced focusing on the example of a mill trial of microbial product MC-003.