TY - JOUR A1 - Krüger, Oliver A1 - Fattah, K. P. A1 - Adam, Christian T1 - Phosphorus recovery from the wastewater stream - necessity and possibilities JF - Desalination and Water Treatment N2 - The annual demand of phosphorus (P) for fertilizer use is more than 550,000 t in Germany. Several of the input streams like mineral fertilizer produced from phosphate rock or sewage sludge are problematic due to contamination with heavy metals and organic pollutants and/or supply risks. Phosphorus recovery from the wastewater stream might help to diminish these problems. Several procedures have been developed to recover P from either sewage sludge ash (SSA) or wastewater via precipitation or crystallization as struvite. This study determined the elemental composition and trace metal mass fractions of 252 SSA samples and 17 struvite samples from wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) to see whether there are differences related to the source of the sludge (municipal/industrial) or the stage of the WWTP where the struvite is produced. Results indicated that there is no clear trend of the elemental mass fractions related to the source of the sludge. All struvite samples show very low heavy metal contents, even though the struvite precipitated from the sludge shows slightly elevated heavy metal mass fractions compared to struvite crystallized from sludge liquor. Struvite is a clean and plant available material for fertilizer production from wastewater streams and has some advantages for the wastewater treatment plant. However, since the P recovery rate of struvite processes is low (7–11%) compared to that from SSA processes (90%), recovery from SSA is necessary for a substantial P recovery from the wastewater stream. T2 - 3rd International Conference on Water, Energy and Environment (ICWEE) CY - Sharjah, United Arab Emirates DA - 24.03.2015 KW - Struvite KW - Phosphorus recovery KW - Wastewater KW - Sewage sludge ash PY - 2016 DO - https://doi.org/10.1080/19443994.2015.1103315 SN - 1944-3994 SN - 1944-3986 VL - 57 IS - 33 SP - 15619 EP - 15627 PB - Taylor & Francis CY - Philadelphia, USA AN - OPUS4-36260 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Vogel, Christian A1 - Krüger, Oliver A1 - Adam, Christian T1 - Thermochemical treatment of sewage sludge ash with sodium additives under reducing conditions analyzed by thermogravimetry JF - Journal of thermal analysis and calorimetry N2 - Phosphorus (P) for fertilizer use can be recovered from sewage sludge ash (SSA). To enhance the bioavailability of P and reduce the heavy metal content of SSA, it can be treated thermochemically with Na2CO3 or Na2SO4 at 950 °C in a rotary kiln using dry sewage sludge or lignite as reducing agent. These processes were investigated by thermogravimetry/differential thermal analysis coupled with gas analysis. Reducing conditions in this experimental setup were provided by 2 % hydrogen in the Ar carrier gas. During SSA + Na2CO3 treatment CO2, CO and water were detected in the off-gas. During SSA + Na2SO4 treatment SO2, some CO2 and water were detected. Heavy metal removal was more efficient for SSA + Na2CO3 compared to the sulfate variant. A SSA + Na2SO4 + lignite variant which also formed CO shifted the heavy metal removal to the results obtained with Na2CO3 which was obviously due to the additional reduction potential. However, Zn evaporation was not achieved with the Na2SO4 variants which were most probably due to immobilization as ZnS. KW - Phosphorus recovery KW - Thermochemical treatment KW - Sewage sludge ash KW - Reducing conditions KW - Heavy metal evaporation KW - FT-IR gas analysis PY - 2016 DO - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-015-5016-z SN - 1388-6150 SN - 1418-2874 SN - 0368-4466 SN - 1572-8943 VL - 123 IS - 2 SP - 1045 EP - 1051 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht AN - OPUS4-34556 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Herzel, Hannes A1 - Krüger, Oliver A1 - Hermann, L. A1 - Adam, Christian T1 - Sewage sludge ash - A promising secondary phosphorus source for fertilizer production JF - Science of the total environment N2 - Sewage sludge incineration is extensively practiced in some European countries such as the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria and Germany. A survey of German sewage sludge ash showed that the recovery potential is high, approx. 19,000 t of phosphorus per year. However, the survey also discovered that the bioavailability of phosphorus in the sewage sludge ash is poor and that more than half of the ashes cannot be used as fertilizers due to high heavy metal content. A new thermochemical process for sewage sludge ash treatment was developed that transforms the ash into marketable fertilizer products. Sewage sludge ash was thermochemically treated with sodium and potassium additives under reducing conditions, whereby the phosphate-bearing mineral phases were transformed into plant available phosphates. High P-bioavailability was achieved with a molar Na/P ratio > 1.75 in the starting materials. Sodium sulfate, carbonate and hydroxide performed comparably as additives for this calcination process. Potassium carbonate and -hydroxide have to be added in a molar K/P ratio > 2.5 to achieve comparable P-solubility. The findings of the laboratory scale investigations were confirmed by an industrial demonstration trial for an ash treatment with sodium sulfate. Simultaneously, the volatile transition metal arsenic (61% removal) as well as volatile heavy metals such as cadmium (80%), mercury (68%), lead (39%) and zinc (9%) were removed via the off-gas treatment system. The product of the demonstration trial is characterized by high bioavailability and a toxic trace element mass fraction below the limit values of the German fertilizer ordinance, thus fulfilling the quality parameters for a P-fertilizer. KW - Sewage sludge ash KW - Phosphorus recovery KW - Thermochemical treatment KW - Reducing conditions KW - Heavy metal evaporation KW - Bioavailability KW - Sodium sulfate PY - 2016 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.08.059 SN - 0048-9697 SN - 1879-1026 IS - 542 SP - 1136 EP - 1143 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam AN - OPUS4-34165 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Vogel, Christian A1 - Krüger, Oliver A1 - Herzel, Hannes A1 - Amidani, L. A1 - Adam, Christian T1 - Chemical state of mercury and selenium in sewage sludge ash based P-fertilizers JF - Journal of Hazardous Materials N2 - Phosphorus-fertilizers from secondary resources such as sewage sludge ash (SSA) will become more important in the future as they could substitute conventional fertilizers based on the nonrenewable resource phosphate rock. Thermochemical approaches were developed which remove heavy metals from SSA prior to its fertilizer application on farmlands. We analyzed the chemical state of mercury and selenium in SSA before and after thermochemical treatment under different conditions for P-fertilizer production by X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy. In some incineration plants the mercury loaded carbon adsorber from off-gas cleaning was collected together with the SSA for waste disposal. SSAs from those plants contained mercury mainly bound to carbon/organic material. The other SSAs contained inorganic mercury compounds which are most probably stabilized in the SSA matrix and were thus not evaporated during incineration. During thermochemical treatment, carbon-bound mercury was removed quantitatively. In contrast, a certain immobile fraction of inorganic mercury compounds remained in thermochemically treated SSA, which were not clearly identified. HgSe might be one of the inorganic compounds, which is supported by results of Se K-edge XANES spectroscopy. Furthermore, the chemical state of selenium in the SSAs was very sensitive to the conditions of the thermochemical treatment. KW - X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy KW - Phosphorus recovery KW - Sewage sludge ash KW - Mercury KW - Selenium KW - Mercury selenide (HgSe) PY - 2016 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2016.03.079 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2016.03.079 VL - 313 SP - 179 EP - 184 PB - Elsevier B.V. CY - Amsterdam, Netherlands AN - OPUS4-35718 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Krüger, Oliver A1 - Adam, Christian T1 - Recovery potential of German sewage sludge ash JF - Waste management N2 - Incineration of sewage sludge is expected to increase in the future due to growing concerns about the direct use of sludge in agriculture. Sewage sludge is the pollutant sink of wastewater treatment and thus loaded with contaminants that might pose environmental hazards. Incineration degrades organic pollutants efficiently, but since the ash is currently mostly disposed of, all valuable component like phosphorus (P) and technologically relevant metals present in the sewage sludge ash (SSA) are removed from the economic cycle entirely. We conducted a complete survey of SSA from German mono-incineration facilities and determined the theoretical recovery potential of 57 elements. German SSA contains up to 19,000 t/a P which equals approximately 13% of phosphorus applied in the German agriculture in form of phosphate rock based mineral fertilizers. Thus, SSA is an important secondary resource of P. However, its P-solubility in ammonium citrate solution, an indicator for the bioavailability, is only about 26%. Treatment of SSA is recommended to enhance P bioavailability and remove heavy metals before it is applied as fertilizer. The recovery potential for technologically relevant metals is generally low, but some of these elements might be recovered efficiently in the course of P recovery exploiting synergies. KW - Sewage sludge ash KW - Recovery potential KW - Phosphorus KW - Critical raw materials KW - Bioavailability KW - Phosphorus recovery KW - Monitoring PY - 2015 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2015.01.025 SN - 0956-053X VL - 45 SP - 400 EP - 406 PB - Pergamon Press CY - New York, NY AN - OPUS4-34157 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -