Abstract
Wastewater and sewage sludge contain organic matter that can be valorized through conversion into energy and/or green chemicals. Moreover, resource recovery from these wastes has become the new focus of wastewater management, to develop more sustainable processes in a circular economy approach. The aim of this review was to analyze current sewage sludge management systems in Scandinavia with respect to resource recovery, in combination with other organic wastes. As anaerobic digestion (AD) was found to be the common sludge treatment approach in Scandinavia, different available organic municipal and industrial wastes were identified and compared, to evaluate the potential for expanding the resource recovery by anaerobic co-digestion. Additionally, a full-scale case study of co-digestion, as strategy for optimization of the anaerobic digestion treatment, was presented for each country, together with advanced biorefinery approaches to wastewater treatment and resource recovery.
Highlights
These contaminants accumulate in the sewage sludge during wastewater treatment, and some of them may not be degraded during sludge stabilization [38,39]
Of the total bio-waste generated in Europe, an average of 40% was still landfilled in 2010 [83], but the European Commission (EC) encouraged the biological treatment of bio-waste by anaerobic digestion or composting [82]
Sewage sludge contains organic matter that can be used for energy generation or the production of green chemicals
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Potential substrates for anaerobic co-digestion with the sludge have been previously reviewed [27], but there is a lack of publications targeting Scandinavian countries, in which the co-digestion of organic waste for biogas production has been taking place for several years [28]. These established systems present an opportunity to include sludge in co-digestion, which could be an interesting approach to centralized organic waste management. The findings from this review paper could enhance the establishment of robust co-digestion systems, key players in urban organic waste management
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