The work aimed at assessing the changes in the particulate material conversion rates of domestic raw sewage, after passing through a pre-treatment unit that used the forced sieving through metallic sieves with apertures of 1.0 and 0.5 mm as strategy to reduce particles' size. The results indicated that the forced sieving and the reduction of particle size were not enough to increase the particulate material hydrolysis rates, since the hydrolysis constants for the raw and sieved sewage, estimated by the first order relation kinetics, analyzing the volatile suspended solids parameter, had similar values, in order of 0.0492 ± 0.0147 d-1, for the raw sewage, and of 0.0472 ± 0.0079 d-1 and 0.0470 ± 0.00117 d-1, for the raw sewage sieved in metallic sieves with apertures of 1.0 and 0.5 mm, respectively.
Anaerobic degradation; domestic sewage; forced sieving; hydrolysis; pre-treatment
