LAUSR

Abstract Traditional wastewater treatment monitoring techniques are time-intensive and do not allow real-time process control, creating a need for methods capable of rapid assessment. As such, the objective of this research was to develop and test new methods to measure surrogate wastewater and sludge characterization parameters (conductivity, fluorescence intensity, and UV–vis absorbance) and evaluate each parameter’s suitability for real-time assessment of treatment progression and performance. Anaerobic digestion of mixed primary and secondary sludge was carried out in a continuous reactor over 28 days. COD (chemical oxygen demand), TS/VS (total solids/volatile solids), pH, conductivity, UV–vis absorbance, and fluorescence intensity were measured over the treatment period and linear regressions between surrogate parameters and COD and VS were performed to identify potential relationships. Regression analyses yielded strong correlations between COD and conductivity, fluorescence intensity (FI), and UV–vis absorbance (R2 values of 0.84, 0.72, 0.74 respectively), and between VS versus conductivity and UV–vis absorbance (R2 values of 0.68, 0.73 respectively) illustrating their potential as real-time monitoring tools. It was also possible to evaluate the progression of treatment by monitoring the point of changes in the trends of the surrogate parameters.