Research project ENDO

BMBF research project ENDO – (02WA9979/0)

Partners: (all from GER)
- TU Berlin,
- ECT Oekotoxikologie GmbH, Flörsheim,
- Hessian State Institute for Environment and Geology,
- FZ Environmental Research Centre Leipzig-Halle GmbH

Duration:  September 1999 - February 2002

Project description and results:

Since September 1999, the BMBF research project "Investigations on the influence of process engineering in wastewater treatment plants on the elimination of selected estrogens and xenoestrogens from wastewater" has been carried out at the Institute for Waste Management and Contaminated Sites with two main focuses. On the one hand, steroid and bisphenol analysis will be carried out in parallel with experiments, and on the other hand the behavior of selected endocrine disruptors during the treatment of raw sludge will be investigated. For this purpose, investigations will be carried out on a laboratory scale, which will be closely oriented to the processes currently in use, as they are also encountered in the course of the project at real wastewater treatment plants.

In detail, degradation tests will be carried out in aerobic and anaerobic environments. The single-stage anaerobic tests simulate the process of sludge digestion with the corresponding process engineering boundary conditions, the two-stage anaerobic tests allow an insight into the behavior of the endocrine active substances during hydrolysis and methanogenic phase separately.

The aerobic experiments are carried out analogously to the simultaneous aerobic sludge stabilization in two laboratory activated sludge plants and as thermophilic sludge stabilization in controllable digesters. In addition, the behavior of endocrine active substances during sewage sludge composting will also be investigated by using so-called landfill simulation reactors, which in this case will be operated aerobically as thermostatable fixed-bed reactors.