Sewage sludge treatment

Sewage sludge treatment described the processes used to manage and dispose of the sludges produced during sewage treatment.

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Sources of sludge

Coarse primary solids and secondary biosolids accumulated in a wastewater treatment process must be treated and disposed of in a safe and effective manner. This material is often inadvertently contaminated with toxic organic and inorganic compounds (e.g. heavy metals).

Digestion

Many sludges are treated using a variety of digestion techniques, the purpose of which is to reduce the amount of organic matter and the number of disease-causing microorganisms present in the solids. The most common treatment options include anaerobic digestion, aerobic digestion, and composting.

Anaerobic digestion

Anaerobic digestion is a bacterial process that is carried out in the absence of oxygen. The process can either be thermophilic digestion in which sludge is fermented in tanks at a temperature of 55°C or mesophilic, at a temperature of around 36°C. Though allowing shorter retention time, thus smaller tanks, thermophilic digestion is more expensive in terms of energy consumption for heating the sludge.

Anaerobic digestion generates biogas with a high proportion of methane that may be used to both heat the tank and run engines or microturbines for other on-site processes. In large treatment plants sufficient energy can be generated in this way to produce more electricity than the machines require. The methane generation is a key advantage of the anaerobic process. Its key disadvantage is the long time required for the process (up to 30 days) and the high capital cost.

Under laboratory conditions it is possible to directly generate useful amounts of electricity from organic sludge using naturally occurring electrochemically active bacteria^{[citation needed]}. Potentially, this technique could lead to an ecologically positive form of power generation, but in order to be effective such a microbial fuel cell must maximize the contact area between the effluent and the bacteria-coated anode surface, which could severely hamper throughput.

For the Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket treatment see UASB.

Aerobic digestion

Aerobic digestion is a bacterial process occurring in the presence of oxygen. Under aerobic conditions, bacteria rapidly consume organic matter and convert it into carbon dioxide. Once there is a lack of organic matter, bacteria die and are used as food by other bacteria. This stage of the process is known as endogenous respiration. Solids reduction occurs in this phase. Because the aerobic digestion occurs much faster than anaerobic digestion, the capital costs of aerobic digestion are lower. However, the operating costs are characteristically much greater for aerobic digestion because of energy costs for aeration needed to add oxygen to the process.

Composting

Composting is also an aerobic process that involves mixing the wastewater solids with sources of carbon such as sawdust, straw or wood chips. In the presence of oxygen, bacteria digest both the wastewater solids and the added carbon source and, in doing so, produce a large amount of heat.

Both anaerobic and aerobic digestion processes can result in the destruction of disease-causing microorganisms and parasites to a sufficient level to allow the resulting digested solids to be safely applied to land used as a soil amendment material (with similar benefits to peat) or used for agriculture as a fertilizer provided that levels of toxic constituents are sufficiently low.

The largest composting site in the world that also processes sewage is the Edmonton Composting Facility, in Edmonton, Canada.

Thermal depolymerization

Thermal depolymerization uses hydrous pyrolysis to convert reduced complex organics to oil. The premacerated, grit-reduced sludge is heated to 250C and compressed to 40 MPa. The hydrogen in the water inserts itself between chemical bonds in natural polymers such as fats, proteins and cellulose. The oxygen of the water combines with carbon, hydrogen and metals. The result is oil, light combustible gases such as methane, propane and butane, water with soluble salts, carbon dioxide, and a small residue of inert insoluble material that resembles powdered rock and char. All organisms and many organic toxins are destroyed. Inorganic salts such as nitrates and phosphates remain in the water after treatment at sufficiently high levels that further treatment is required.

The energy from decompressing the material is recovered, and the process heat and pressure is usually powered from the light combustible gases. The oil is usually treated further to make a refined useful light grade of oil, such as no. 2 diesel and no. 4 heating oil, and then sold.

The choice of a wastewater solid treatment method depends on the amount of solids generated and other site-specific conditions. However, in general, composting is most often applied to smaller-scale applications followed by aerobic digestion and then lastly anaerobic digestion for the larger-scale municipal applications.

Sludge disposal

When a liquid sludge is produced, further treatment may be required to make it suitable for final disposal. Typically, sludges are thickened (dewatered) to reduce the volumes transported off-site for disposal. Processes for reducing water content include lagooning in drying beds to produce a cake that can be applied to land or incinerated; pressing, where sludge is mechanically filtered, often through cloth screens to produce a firm cake; and centrifugation where the sludge is thickened by centrifugally separating the solid and liquid. Sludges can be disposed of by liquid injection to land or by disposal in a landfill. There are concerns about sludge incineration because of air pollutants in the emissions, along with the high cost of supplemental fuel, making this a less attractive and less commonly constructed means of sludge treatment and disposal. There is no process which completely eliminates the requirements for disposal of biosolids.

In South Australia, after centrifugation, the sludge is then completely dried by sunlight. The nutrient rich biosolids are then provided to farmers free-of-charge to use as a natural fertiliser. This method has reduced the amount of landfill generated by the process each year.

See also

• Sewage
• Waste management