Environmental performance of dewatered sewage sludge digestate utilization based on life cycle assessment

Due to the global trend of urbanization, the amount of sewage water is increasing in cities. This calls for efficient treatment of the resulting sewage sludge. To date, in the 27 European Union member countries (EU-27), the prevailing treatment method is application on arable land. Anaerobic digestion is one of the treatment methods being increasingly used nowadays. However, the resulting digestate requires further utilization. Therefore, in this study, the environmental performance of composting, combustion, and pyrolysis options for dewatered sewage sludge digestate is evaluated based on a life cycle assessment. The results show that digestate combustion and composting performed better than pyrolysis for most of the selected impact categories. However, pyrolysis of sewage sludge is still under development, and there are, to some degree, uncertainties in the data related to this technology; thus, more information for the performance assessment of pyrolysis is still required.

Automated summary

With the trend of urbanization, the importance of sewage and sludge treatment is increasing. The method of treatment and utilization of digestate has a significant impact on environmental performance, with combustion and composting showing more advantages over pyrolysis. However, further development and assessment are needed for the pyrolysis technology.