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The effectiveness of an advanced treatment of wastewater generated by non-hazardous plastic solid waste (PSW) washing, based on the Sequencing Batch Biofilter Granular Reactor (SBBGR), was assessed in terms of gross parameters, removal efficiencies and sludge production. The proposed treatment was also compared with the conventional treatment, which was based on primary and secondary treatments, using the activated sludge process, performed by Recuperi Pugliesi, a leading company in the plastic recycling industry located in Bari, Italy. The company produces low-density polyethylene (LDPE) regenerated granules from PSW used in agricultural and floricultural greenhouse activities and industrial packaging after a washing stage in the aqueous phase. The latter generates large volumes of wastewater, the conventional treatment of which is characterised by large quantities of sludge and the associated disposal problems. Under steady-state conditions, the SBBGR provided impressive removal efficiencies regarding the main gross parameters (over 90% for COD and TKN, over 99% for BOD 5 , TSS, VSS and NH 3 , and over 80% for TN) with a statistically better effluent quality than that of the conventional treatment. The SBBGR effluent quality was modelled in terms of washing water characteristics by using generalized additive models (GAMs). The SBBGR treatment was characterised by a specific sludge production five times lower than that of the conventional treatment (0.21 kg TSS vs. 1.0 kg TSS per m 3 of wastewater treated). Compared with the conventional treatment, the proposed process showed a five-fold reduction in the cost of sludge disposal, which saved 50% of the operating cost., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Nowadays, sludge management represents one of the most critical challenges in the field of sewage treatment for economic and environmental impacts. Therefore, the reduction of sludge has become a major issue for the operators of municipal wastewater treatment plants. In the present paper, a new system, whose acronym is MULESL (MUch LEss SLudge), is proposed and tested at full scale for reducing the quantity of sludge in the water line of the sewage treatment plant. MULESL system takes the advantage of maintenance metabolism to significantly reduce the sludge production. The effectiveness of MULESL system in removing the typical pollutants and reducing sludge production was evaluated at full scale by using 3500 PE unit located in Putignano's WWTP (Puglia, Italy). This unit was obtained by retrofitting an existing activated sludge basin. The results obtained over 1-year period, during which MULESL unit treated the effluent of the preliminary treatment step, have indicated that it was characterized by a specific sludge production as low as 0.13 kg of dry sludge per kg of COD removed; 77% lower than that recorded for primary and secondary treatments of the conventional plant during the same period. This sludge reduction was obtained with a plant volume 27% smaller than that of the conventional water line. Furthermore, the organic matter of the sludge was already stabilized, thus allowing to save investment costs for digestion process facilities. Finally, MULESL unit guaranteed a mean removal efficiency higher than 95% for COD, BOD 5 , TSS, TKN, NH 3 and TN., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

In the present study, the possibility of recovering both thermal energy and water for agricultural purposes from sewage is evaluated. A treatment plant, based on a sequencing batch biofilter granular reactor (SBBGR) followed by sand filtration and coupled with a solar wastewater source heat pump, was operated from September to November 2018 at a set-point temperature of 14 °C to verify the stability of heat recovery efficiency and the suitability of plant effluent to be reused for irrigation. Heat recovery did not influence the SBBGR treatment and disinfection efficiency, which removed about 90% of suspended solids, chemical and biochemical oxygen demand and ammonia, as well as 70% of total nitrogen, 3 log 10 units of Escherichia coli and more than 1 log 10 unit of Clostridium perfringens. Furthermore, after sand filtration, water quality complied with the standards for agricultural reuse currently in force in several countries. Energy extracted from SBBGR was mainly influenced by environmental conditions, affecting wastewater temperature, and also by wastewater composition, affecting the energy release due to bacterial metabolic activity for carbon and nitrogen removal. Notably, no evident deterioration of energy extraction efficiency from the SBBGR was observed, suggesting negligible fouling phenomena on the submerged thermal exchanger., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)