Abstract
The management of sewage sludge originated from municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is an urgent issue. In 2019, the local authority of the Piemonte region started a survey with the aim of collecting recent data concerning wastewater and sludge management in the WWTPs located in its own territory. The survey’s results revealed that 60% of the sludge (51,000 t, as dry substance, d.s.) produced by the local WWTPs was recovered or disposed of outside of the region, and a similar amount of sludge was recovered in agriculture directly or after composting. The increase in the costs to accommodate sewage sludge in recovery or disposal plants, followed to a recent Italian Sentence (27958/2017), and the more and more stringent requirements fixed by lots of European countries for the application of sludge in agriculture, are pushing the Piemonte region authority to re-organize its own network for sludge management, with solutions based onto proximity and diversification. Whether the provisions of the current German legislation are applied in the future also in Italy, approx. 90% of sewage sludge produced into the Piemonte region should be incinerated, with a subsequent step of phosphorous recovery. The new regional plan, according to the Regional Address Deed, should consider a diversification of sludge treatment and recovery practices. On this basis, a need for new plants for around 40,000 t d.s./y could be planned.
Highlights
The management of sewage sludge originated from municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is an actual and urgent issue
A Picture of the WWTPs Located in the Piemonte Region
The territory of the Piemonte region has a totality of 167 WWTPs with a design capacity of more than 2000 e.i., for an overall design capacity of approx. 8.5 M
Summary
The management of sewage sludge originated from municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is an actual and urgent issue. Sewage sludge is the solid, semisolid, or slurry residual material that is produced as a by-product of wastewater treatment processes. The data concerning the amount of produced and disposed sewage sludge from municipal wastewater (as dry substance, d.s.) in the EU, from 2007 to 2018, are available on the Eurostat website [5]. 28 September 2018 introduced a specific regulation to cope with the problem of sludge management It confirmed the validity of the threshold values introduced by D.Lgs. 99/92 concerning the reuse of sewage sludge in agriculture, and, with the subsequent Law 130/2018, the two legislative documents fixed threshold values for a series of substances (namely hydrocarbons C10–C40, PAH, PCDD/PCDF, PCB, toluene, selenium, beryllium, arsenic, total and hexavalent chromium) that were not included in Annex I B of D.Lgs. 99/92. The results of this survey are intended to be of aid to put in place new strategies for the management of sewage sludge in the Piemonte region, so as to achieve the objectives of proximity, in the use and recovery of sewage sludge, and maximization of the regional self-sufficiency
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