Sewage Sludge Treatment

The need to dispose of sludges from the treatment of household sewerage has been answered relying on a wide array of solutions.

Amongst these: application to agricultural land; aerobic or anaerobic digestion; composting; incineration, and other thermal treatments.

Usually, sludges do not contain only plant nutrients (like Phosphorus, Nitrogen, Potassium), but also substances harmful to the environment and human health: heavy metals; hardly biodegradable organic compounds (detergents, drugs, body care products); pathogen agents.

In this case, thermal treatment is the best-preferred option. Sewage sludges incineration can be achieved in urban waste incineration plants, cement kilns, other expressly dedicated furnaces.

Our experience in the Energy from Waste domain allows us to cope with the challenges arising when dealing with sewage sludges:

1. the extremely low energy content of the sludges
2. the concentration of heavy metals in the ashes resulting from the combustion process
3. the need to design an effective air treatment system

We have significant experience in adapting existing EfW facilities for the co-combustion of sewage sludges, as well as in the design of dedicated plants.