Benchmarking of advanced sludge processing routes

Today, several technologies and management strategies are proposed and applied in WWTPs to minimize sludge production and contamination and their techno-economic feasibility has to be carefully evaluated. The increasing interest on this issue is demonstrated by the research financing policies of the European Union. Recently, an important project has been funded, with the aim of finding new routes (hence the project name: ROUTES - Novel processing ROUTES for effective sewage sludge management) for sludge management and so guiding the EU members in their future choices. In this work a technical-economic assessment procedure (benchmarking) for the comparison of sewage sludge management strategies is proposed and some advanced sludge processing routes (Enhanced Sludge Digestion, MBR with side stream Ozonation, Alternated Cycles process) are analyzed.