Utilization of sewage sludge in EU application of old and new methods—A review
TL;DR: In this article, the authors review past and future trends in sludge handling, focusing mainly at thermal processes (e.g. pyrolysis, wet oxidation, gasification) and the utilization of sewage sludge in cement manufacture as a co-fuel.
Abstract: The European Union has made progress in dealing with municipal wastewater in individual countries and as a corporate entity. However, it intends to make still further and substantial progress over the next 15 years. Currently, the most widely available options in the EU are the agriculture utilization, the waste disposal sites, the land reclamation and restoration, the incineration and other novel uses. The selection of an option on a local basis reflects local or national, cultural, historical, geographical, legal, political and economic circumstances. The degree of flexibility varies from country to country. In any case sludge treatment and disposal should always be considered as an integral part of treatment of wastewater. There is a wide range of other uses for sludge, which exploit its energy or chemical content, namely the thermal processes. The present paper sought to review past and future trends in sludge handling, focusing mainly at thermal processes (e.g. pyrolysis, wet oxidation, gasification) and the utilization of sewage sludge in cement manufacture as a co-fuel.
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TL;DR: How Big Data approaches can be used to improve the outputs of tools currently in use by the water industry, such as SAGIS (Source Apportionment GIS system), helping to reveal new relationships between chemicals, the environment, and human health, and in turn provide better understanding of contaminants in wastewater.
Abstract: The water utility sector is subject to stringent legislation, seeking to address both the evolution of practices within the chemical/pharmaceutical industry, and the safeguarding of environmental protection, and which is informed by stakeholder views. Growing public environmental awareness is balanced by fair apportionment of liability within-sector. This highly complex and dynamic context poses challenges for water utilities seeking to manage the diverse chemicals arising from disparate sources reaching Wastewater Treatment Plants, including residential, commercial, and industrial points of origin, and diffuse sources including agricultural and hard surface water run-off. Effluents contain broad ranges of organic and inorganic compounds, herbicides, pesticides, phosphorus, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals of emerging concern. These potential pollutants can be in dissolved form, or arise in association with organic matter, the associated risks posing significant environmental challenges. This paper examines how the adoption of new Big Data tools and computational technologies can offer great advantage to the water utility sector in addressing this challenge. Big Data approaches facilitate improved understanding and insight of these challenges, by industry, regulator, and public alike. We discuss how Big Data approaches can be used to improve the outputs of tools currently in use by the water industry, such as SAGIS (Source Apportionment GIS system), helping to reveal new relationships between chemicals, the environment, and human health, and in turn provide better understanding of contaminants in wastewater (origin, pathways, and persistence). We highlight how the sector can draw upon Big Data tools to add value to legacy datasets, such as the Chemicals Investigation Programme in the UK, combined with contemporary data sources, extending the lifespan of data, focusing monitoring strategies, and helping users adapt and plan more efficiently. Despite the relative maturity of the Big Data technology and adoption in many wider sectors, uptake within the water utility sector remains limited to date. By contrast with the extensive range of applications of Big Data in in other sectors, highlight is drawn to how improvements are required to achieve the full potential of this technology in the water utility industry.
37 citations
TL;DR: This work shows the results obtained with a thermophilic membrane reactor, for processing a biological sludge derived from a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) that treats urban and industrial wastewater.
37 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a review of N2O emissions from a compost pile, a municipal wastewater treatment plant, a constructed wetland, and mineral N-fertilizer-stabilized soils with their aerobic-anaerobic mosaics is presented.
Abstract: Energized electron flows through biological systems sustain nature’s complexity. They drive bacterial, archaeal, and fungal oxidation–reduction processes and enable to introduce CO2 and N2 from the atmospheric pool. Electron flux-based food webs convert soil organic matter (SOM) in virgin forest and permafrost soils, over-fertilized agricultural land, grassland systems, compost/wastewater treatment plants, oceans, rain forests, savannahs, and forests of the temperate climate zones, and have their strategy adapted on the system in which they are active. Thus, the electron driving power is responsible in our industrializing world that carbon and nitrogen returns to the atmosphere presently with an annual N2O-N proportion of 0.5 to 4.2 terragrams (Tg) or an annual atmospheric N2O-N increase of 0.25 %. N2O is a 300-times more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Nature’s water-soluble soil carbon (CH2O)/NO3
− ratio balancing is seen as a model of how N2O emissions could be kept in a tolerable range. Sub strategies beyond are (a) an annual 400–800 terragrams (Tg) photosynthate-C (90–95 % sugars) release into plant rhizospheres, (b) spot-wise N enriching animal excrement and wide C/N ratio litter fall distributions, (c) viral shunts or life shortcuts to supporting O2 consuming, N supplying, and denitrifying recycler communities, (d) subterranean organic–inorganic soil components mixing and O2 diffusion promoting NO3
− formation, and (e) the release of nitrification inhibiting compounds as neem, karanjin, or specific humic acids which help in controlling nitrate formation and denitrification. Soil microbial transport vehicles are fungal hyphae, plant roots, and subterranean animals. Through their activities, aerobic–anaerobic gradients in the soil crumb mosaics emerge. Plant root intertissue spaces, animal guts, and co-transported soil crumbs where under carbon-dominated CH2O/NO3
− ratios preferred microbes reside are mobile locations in well-aerated soils. In such reduction-equivalent surplus environments, denitrifying communities are forced to use during anaerobic respiration available nitrate-, nitrite ions, NO, and N2O economically. Though at carbon-dominated CH2O/NO3
− ratios more N2O is reduced to N2 than in nitrate surplus environments, a complete prevention of N2O emissions is not a reality and even not desirable from the climate point of view. After describing N2O formation and emissions from a compost pile, a municipal wastewater treatment plant, a constructed wetland, and mineral N-fertilizer, sewage sludge or nitrification inhibitor-stabilized N-fertilizer amended soils with their aerobic-anaerobic mosaics, this review tries to deduce exercisable CN (CH2O/NO3) ratio shaping and N2O emission lowering strategies for ecologists, agriculturists, and waste managers in our industrializing world.
36 citations
Cites background from "Utilization of sewage sludge in EU ..."
...…is meanwhile the field application of sewage sludge, which may contain 3.8, 1.6, 0.4, 0.6, 5.3 % N, P, K, Mg, Ca and 202, 5, 131, 349, 53, 3, and 1446 mg Pb, Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Hg, Zn per kg dry matter, respectively (Benckiser and Simarmata 1994; Sturm et al. 1994; Fytili and Zabiotou 2008)....
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors presented the thermoeconomic analysis and assessment of a municipal wastewater treatment system, which is described in detail and a thermoeconomical methodology based on exergoeconomic relations and the specific exergy costing (SPECO) method is provided to allocate cost flows through subcomponents of the plant.
36 citations
TL;DR: It was concluded that the basil cultivated under tested levels of SSGI and SSNI is not permissible for human consumption because of the high concentrations of copper, zinc, iron, nickel, lead, and cadmium.
36 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, an analytical procedure involving sequential chemicai extractions was developed for the partitioning of particulate trace metals (Cd, Co, Cu, Ni, Pb, Zn, Fe, and Mn) into five fractions: exchangeable, bound to carbonates, binding to Fe-Mn oxides and bound to organic matter.
Abstract: An analytical procedure involving sequential chemicai extractions has been developed for the partitioning of particulate trace metals (Cd, Co, Cu, Ni, Pb, Zn, Fe, and Mn) into five fractions: exchangeable, bound to carbonates, bound to Fe-Mn oxides, bound to organic matter, and residual. Experimental results obtained on replicate samples of fluvial bottom sediments demonstrate that the relative standard deviation of the sequential extraction procedure Is generally better than =10%. The accuracy, evaluated by comparing total trace metal concentrations with the sum of the five Individual fractions, proved to be satisfactory. Complementary measurements were performed on the Individual leachates, and on the residual sediments following each extraction, to evaluate the selectivity of the various reagents toward specific geochemical phases. An application of the proposed method to river sediments is described, and the resulting trace metal speciation is discussed.
10,518 citations
"Utilization of sewage sludge in EU ..." refers background in this paper
...Over the last decades, a great variety of extraction schemes, both simple and sequential have been developed and, although some methods have been widely used [12,13] none has been unreservedly accepted by the scientific community....
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Book•
01 Jan 1972
TL;DR: Wastewater Engineering: An Overview of Wastewater Engineering, Methods and Implementation Considerations as mentioned in this paper is a good starting point for a discussion of the issues of wastewater engineering. But, it is not a complete survey of the entire literature.
Abstract: Wastewater Engineering: An Overview. Wastewater Flowrates. Wastewater Characteristics. Wastewater Treatment Objective, Methods, and Implementation Considerations. Introduction to Wastewater Treatment Plant Design. Physical Unit Operations. Chemical Unit Processes. Biological Unit Processes. Design of Facilities for Physical and Chemical Treatment of Wastewater. Design of Facilities for the Biological Treatment of Wastewater. Advanced Wastewater Treatment. Design of Facilities for the Treatment and Disposal of Sludge. Natural-Treatment Systems. Small Wastewater Treatment Systems. Management of Wastewater from Combined Sewers. Wastewater Reclamation and Reuse.
3,826 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a review of the current and future issues related to the combustion of sewage sludge is presented, and a number of technologies for thermal processing of sludge are discussed in three groups, i.e., mono-combustion, cocombustions and alternative processes.
1,026 citations
"Utilization of sewage sludge in EU ..." refers background in this paper
...Multiple hearth and fluidized bed furnaces are the most popular and the latter is becoming widely applied [24]....
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...Analysis has shown that about 78–98% of Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn present in the sewage sludge are retained in the ash, whereas up to 98% of the Hg may be released into the atmosphere with the flue gas [24]....
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...The whole process is occurring in two distinctive regimes [24]:...
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors proposed a standardization with respect to grain size effects, commonly achieved by analyzing the sieve fraction <63μm, which is used to pin point major sources of metal pollution and to estimate the toxicity potential of dredged materials.
Abstract: Sediment analyses are used to pin‐point major sources of metal pollution and to estimate the toxicity potential of dredged materials on agricultural land. For source assessments (Part I of the present review) standardization is needed with respect to grain size effects, commonly achieved by analyzing the sieve fraction <63μm. Further aspects include sampling methods, evaluation of background data and extent of anthropogenic metal enrichment.
530 citations