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Activated sludge process is widely used in treating a wide variety of wastewater, but the by-product is the large amount of excess sludge. To treat the excess sludge properly could spend 25%-60% of the total cost of wastewater treatment, while improperly treating the sludge could cause serious secondary pollution. Therefore, the reduction of excess sludge is becoming a rising challenge. Using thermophiles to degrade excess sludge is a way easy in operation and inexpensive in maintenance, being a promising method in application. This paper reviewed the recent progress in the researches of sludge-degrading thermophiles, their working mechanisms, and the enzymes from thermophiles, such as thermophilic proteolytic enzymes and thermophilic lipases which play an important role in the degradation of sludge. The factors affecting the degradation of sludge by thermophiles were summarized, and the perspectives for the further research on the application of thermophiles in digesting sludge were discussed.

Landfill sites are the major sources of offensive odor in urban public facilities. With the progress of urbanization and the residents' demands for a higher living environment quality, the odor emission from landfill sites has become a severe pollution problem, and the odor control at landfill sites has been one of the research hotspots. This paper summarized the main components and their concentrations of the odor from landfill sites, and expatiated on the research progress in the in-situ control of the odor. The further research directions in in-situ control of the odor from landfill sites were prospected.

Tea waste is an important part of agricultural solid wastes, because of its various sources and huge amount. The heavy metals removal from waste water by tea waste has been paid much attention by the researchers around the world, owing to the adsorption characteristic of tea waste. In this paper, the research advances in the heavy metals removal from aqueous phase by tea waste were summarized from the aspects of affecting factors, adsorption mechanism, pretreatment, desorption, and regeneration, and the prospects were put forward. It was considered that for the industrialized utilization of tea waste absorbents, further researches should be focused on their adsorption mechanism, pretreatment, desorption and regeneration, technological parameters, and after treatment.

The effects of bio-charcoal acted as sludge-composting additive on soil characteristics and plant growth were studied. Compared with the treatment of composted sludge without bio-charcoal, soil cation exchange capacity in treatment of composted sludge with bio-charcoal increased over 5% and 10% respectively and soil nitrogen content increased 13% and 18% respectively for two kind soils. The composted sludge with bio-charcoal also resulted in 23% higher enhancement on ryegrass biomass and 8%-10% higher enhancement on ryegrass chlorophyll content. In addition, with the amendment of bio-charcoal, the bioavailability of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in composted sludge was decreased, which resulted in the lower absorption and accumulation of ryegrass to PAHs. Compared with the control, the PAHs concentration in ryegrass amended composted sludge with bio-charcoal decreased 27%-34%. The results indicated that composted sludge with bio-charcoal resulted in much more improvement on the plant growth as well as less negative effect on environment. Therefore, biocharcoal was in favor of the safe land application of sewage sludge.

Methane is the second largest contributor after carbon dioxide to global warming, while landfill is considered as one of the major sources of methane emission, accounting for 1.5%-15% of the global methane sources. Methanotrophic microorganisms play an important role in regulating global methane content, and landfill cover soil is proved to have high capacity of methane oxidation. The study of methanotrophic microorganisms in landfill cover soil and their mechanisms in methane oxidation becomes one of the hot research fields in environmental science and applied microbiology. This review summarized the recent progress on the research of methanotrophic microorganisms, mechanisms and dynamics of microbial methane oxidation, co-metabolism of methane and trace landfill gases, and environmental factors affecting methane oxidation in landfill cover soil. Some perspectives for further research on methanotrophic microorganisms in landfill cover soil were discussed.