Abstract

A 2-year sampling campaign was conducted inthree wastewater treatment plants of various sizes in theRome area to assess the occurrence of nutrients andmicropollutants among primary, secondary and digestedsludge. The primary purpose was to evaluate the quality ofdifferent sludge types and their suitability for agricultural use.Primary sludgewas consistently more polluted than secondaryin terms of organic micropollutants, whereas heavy metalspartitioned equally among the sludge types. In digestedsludge, the heavy metal concentrations were always belowlimit values proposed for agricultural utilisation. In contrast,organic micropollutants concentrated during anaerobic digestionand affected the quality of the digested sludge. Secondarysludge resulted less polluted and richer in nitrogen and phosphorus(up to three times) than primary sludge and is hencemore suitable for agricultural use. Separate processing ofprimary and secondary sludge might therefore be an innovativeoption for sludge management that could maximise thepossibilities of agricultural use of secondary sludge and limitdisposal problems only to primary sludge. In fact, primarysludge could be easily treated and disposed of by conventionalprocesses including thickening, anaerobic digestion, centrifugationand incineration, whereas the difficult digestibility ofsecondary sludge could be improved by disintegration pretreatmentbefore stabilisation.

Autore Pugliese

• Mascolo Giuseppe

Tutti gli autori

• Gianico A.; Braguglia C.M.; Mascolo G. ; Mininni G.

Titolo volume/Rivista

Environmetal science and pollution research international

Anno di pubblicazione

2013

ISSN

1614-7499

ISBN

Non Disponibile

Numero di citazioni Wos

Nessuna citazione

Ultimo Aggiornamento Citazioni

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Numero di citazioni Scopus

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Ultimo Aggiornamento Citazioni

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Settori ERC

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Codici ASJC

Non Disponibile