Experience of using sewage sludge in soil for green building

Wastewater sludge from municipal wastewater treatment plants in Nizhny Novgorod and soils based on them, prepared with different ratios of sludge, sawdust and peat, have been investigated. Sewage sludge-based soils contain plant nutrients and are suitable for use as fertilizing materials in green building. Under the conditions of a three-year lysimetric experiment on cereal lawn grasses, a significant efficiency of organic soils was noted in comparison with traditional soils. The lawn maintenance regime revealed differences in the mixtures of fertilizing materials in terms of the effect on the productivity of the phytocenosis. Use of sewage sludge containing large amounts of heavy metals as one of the soil components undoubtedly leads to increase in the amount of these toxic elements in the soil as a whole.

Multicomponent Solid Fuel Production Technology Using Waste Water

An assessment is given to the problems of urban wastewater sludge utilization in our country and abroad, with determination of formation and usage level. Global trends in the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions exacerbate the urgency of solving the designated tasks. At the same time, recently, in connection with the EU’s plans to introduce a cross-border carbon levy, it has become necessary to reduce the carbon footprint from burning traditional fuels, which is an urgent problem of modern society. One of the directions that provide a solution to this problem is the replacement of part of the hydrocarbon fuel by the consumption of multicomponent solid fuel based on the use of combustible waste that is part of the multicomponent fuel. This solid fuel can be used to meet the needs of small consumers, for example, in the autumn-summer period to generate a drying agent for the preparation of grain on the threshing-floor, in small boiler houses, in sand drying plants of locomotive depots, heat installations of hangars and workshops, as well as in other heat-generating installations operating on solid fuels. At the same time, solving the problem of reducing the carbon footprint for Belarus is closely related to another urgent task – reducing the energy component of industrial products and the environmental consequences of storing accumulated and generated waste. The paper presents the results of joint scientific research in the field of application of modern technologies and equipment using electrohydraulic treatment to reduce and minimize the level of anthropogenic and polluting substances in wastewater sludge. The described technological equipment, technology and post-treatment modes reduce the content of harmful substances in the wastewater sludge composition even with short-term treatment. An assessment of the effectiveness of the developed technology for the use of sewage sludge is given, using the method of wet multicomponent briquetting to obtain a multicomponent fuel. The presented process flow diagram of multicomponent briquetting using sewage sludge and plant-wood waste directly shows the undeniable advantages of using watered wastewater sludge as a raw material for the production of solid fuel. At the same time, the optimally selected ratio of components and moisture content of the briquetted composition solves a number of technologically difficult problems that cannot be realized using traditional briquetting technologies. The presented data of the conducted research and the developed technology make it possible to expand the area of using wastewater sludge as a secondary renewable material resource.

Immobilization of Hazardous Wastes on One-Part Blast Furnace Slag-Based Geopolymers

The immobilization of hazardous wastes in ordinary Portland cement (OPC)-based materials has been widely studied and implemented. OPC-based materials have a high carbon footprint associated with their production and geopolymer materials are a sustainable and eco-friendly alternative. Therefore, this work aimed to immobilize two hazardous industrial wastes: copper wastewater sludge and phosphogypsum in one-part geopolymer materials. For that purpose, the precursor was partially substituted by these wastes (5, 10 and 20 wt.%) in the formulations. The geopolymer fresh and hardened state properties were evaluated, and the immobilisation of pollutants was determined through leaching tests. In phosphogypsum pastes (PG5, PG10 and PG20) it was observed that the compressive strength decreased with the increase in its amount, varying between 67 MPa and 19 MPa. In copper sludge pastes, the compressive strength of the specimens (CWS5 and CWS10) reached ~50 MPa. The mortars, MPG10 and MCWSs10, had compressive strengths of 13 MPa and 21 MPa, respectively. Leaching tests showed that pastes and mortars immobilise the hazardous species of the wastes, except for As from copper sludge, whose the best result was found in the compact paste (CWSs10) that leached 2 mg/kg of As. Results suggest that optimized compositions are suitable for the construction sector.