CLEANCOMPOST · Technology of compost production from sewage sludge with reduction of ammonia emission and heavy metal content
FP6 — Marie Curie Actions (Human Resources and Mobility)
- Duration
- 2006-07-15 → 2007-07-14
- EU contribution
- €40,000
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- ERG
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Results in brief
Final Activity Report Summary - CLEANCOMPOST (Technology of compost production from sewage sludge with reduction of ammonia emission and heavy metal content)
At present, sewage sludge management is not considered to be an important source of ammonia emissions. Current data in national and European ammonia emissions inventories is based on too small qualitative information and is not relevant to modern sludge treatment processes. However, the results obtained during the realisation of this project clearly showed that typical way of agricultural usage of sewage sludge can be the source of important ammonia and methane emission. This happens during the stage of composting of sewage sludge and is related with too small carbon / nitrogen (C/N) ratio in composted mass. This low C/N ratio (in real conditions usually under 12) is caused by high price of structural materials (like straw, sawdust or wooden chips). That is why in order to economise the technology costs, the composting companies use insufficient quantities of material with high carbon content which produces the huge ammonia losses. Additionally, the lack of structural material during composting process causes the anaerobic zones inside the composting heaps. This fact influence on huge methane emission during the whole composting process. Because methane is 20 - 60 times more responsible for greenhouse effect than CO2, the results obtained during CLEANCOMPOST project show the potential big negative environmental impact of sewage sludge composting if the usual practices of sewage sludge management will not be changed. The experiments with electroremediation of heavy metals from sewage sludge, the second topic of the research, showed positive effect of this technology on heavy metal content. However, it was obtained not directly in sewage sludge matrix but on earlier step, in the phase of liquid wastewater, before addition of flocculants. Looking on large variability of urban wastewater this technology still needs more research for its optimisation. However, the initial results with reduction of heavy metal content seem to be very promising for the future implementation of electroremediation technology on full-scale level.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Agricultural utilization of sewage sludge - as a high value manure- seems to be one of the best manners of its implementation. However compost production from sewage sludge carries two serious dangers: high heavy metals (HM) content (if sewage sludge come from industrialized areas) and high ammonia emission during the composting process. These two factors limit the possibilities of the most ecological way of sewage sludge utilization i.e. usage as a fertilizer in agriculture. Research in the last years has shown little data regarding the ammonia abatement from sludge composting processes. Data on HM remediation from sewage sludge' contrary to soils remediation - is almost non-existing in the scientific literature. Main goal of the project is to make sew age sludge available as an ecologically friendly fertilizer to be used in agriculture.This is done by:- removal of HM;- decreasing ammonia emission during processing.The project methods comprises an execution of two research tasks:- development of method for removal of HM from sewage sludge based on the preceding experiments with liquid manure electroremediation made by the Fellow at the Wageningen University in the framework of MC EIF;- laboratory experiments on the ammonia emission using the reactor for HM removal and an advanced bioreactor for modelling of composting of organic waste; these experiments will be based on the experiences of the Fellow developed during the project of estimation of ammonia emissions in different technologies of manure management leading by him in 2001-3 and training in 2004-5 at Wageningen University and Research which is one of the European centres in the field of ammonia measurement and abatement technologies. It is envisioned that the realization of the project will le ad to a significant decrease in environmental contamination.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- AUGUST CIESZKOWSKI AGRICULTURAL UNIVERSITY OF POZNAN · POZNANCoordinatorCity levelPoland
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union