Description
Many countries recognized that sludge and sludge components may be recycled in a “productification” strategy, i.e. a strategy aimed at making products from sludge intended for sale in the market place. The objective of the project is an integrated model of novel sewage sludge treatment and management that will specify the contribution of new technologies on development of “productification” strategies to energy and matter recovery and remediation strategies of contaminated soils. Enhancement of research-based knowledge development in Poland as well as improving the career perspectives of Polish-Norwegian researches. The outputs of the project will be research results, including scientific publications, submitted patent application and high number of researchers using the mobility component The Polish and Norwegian community’s industries and public organisations. Project participants will benefit from high quality training in research and complementary techniques and from scientific visit and secondments to other partners in the consortium. Collaboration will strengthen the networks between Polish and Norwegian trade union organisations.
Summary of project results
The problem of sewage sludge management still remains open, due to its significant quantity and presence of toxic contaminations. In spite of the fact that European countries are the leaders in introducing of circular economy, it is estimated that within EU almost 20% of total volume of sewage sludge is landfilled. Hence BIOTENMARE project tried to show efficient and sustainable way sewage sludge management with energy and matter recovery. The pathway comprises: 1) co-digestion of sewage sludge with other biowaste (energy recovery); 2) composting and vermicomposting (matter recovery); 3) use of compost for energy crops production (improved of carbon sequestration). It was found that addition of GTS to digesters treating sewage sludge resulted in increased VS removal and methane yield up to 13% and 52%, respectively. While the use of OFMSW as the next co-substrate in the feedstock, can boost methane yield and VS removal up to 82% and approximately 29%, respectively. Composting step was performed using: 1) sewage sludge from regional wastewater treatment plant, sewage sludge from co-digestion, with organic fraction of municipal solid waste selectively collected from households,2) bulking agents: miscanthus, willow, maize straw, barley straw and 3) grass from green urban areas. In the most cases the obtained products were characterized by a low content of heavy metals. Studies have shown that composting is a good method for the disposal of different organic wastes. In turn for vermicomposting adult (clitellated) Eisenia andrei worms provided by the Lille 1 University (France) laboratory. It was found that vermicomposting led not only for obtain valuable product, but also reduced some contaminant, like PAHs (85.75% removal was noted). Within WP3 application of sewage sludge, municipal compost, coal slurry and lake chalk improves the condition of degraded soil and lead to increased production of plant biomass. The growth improvement and visible quality enhancement of aboveground biomass was recorded in both pinus and miscanthus after the introduction of organic substances to degraded soils. However, taking into consideration of environmental safety compost seems to be better choice even than stabilized sewage sludge. The work in WP4 was focused on environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) modelling of treatment solutions for sewage sludge and organic waste substrates, by comparative analysis of incineration, composting and anaerobic digestion technologies.
Summary of bilateral results
The project BIOTENMARE was realized by three universities: Czestochowa University of Technology (Czestochowa, Poland); Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Trondheim, Norway) and Norwegian University of Life Sciences (Aas, Norway). The team leaders: prof Małgorzata Kacprzak, prof Helge Brattebo, prof Bal Ram Singh prof Ewa Neczaj and prof. January Bien are international recognized experts in sewage sludge management, LCA and soil sciences. The fusion of their experience allowed for improved knowledge and understanding of many aspects of sustainable sewage sludge management based on technologies with maximize of energy and matter recovery. Strong collaboration among the research teams gave the opportunity of visits and secondments to the institutions of the other partners of the consortium. It was extremely important for young researchers – PhD students, because they were exposed to work under different conditions in Norway (laboratories, different rules, different disciplines and cultures).