Marketable sludge derivatives from sustainable processing of wastewater in a highly integrated treatment plant
Chaney, K.1, Murray, C.1, Smith, G.1 and Le, M.S.2, 1Harper Adams University College, 2United Utilities Group PLC, UK
(free)
Abstract:
This project aims to develop a new sludge management concept that reduces the volume of sludge using a more energy efficient process that results in a number of products which are useful for society. END-O-SLUDG (www.end-o-sludg.eu) is an EU FP7 project involving 14 partners from 5 European countries. Using an integrated approach with emphasis on the whole wastewater treatment system, the project researches innovative system solutions that have the potential to achieve up to 20% annual carbon savings for the water industry by 2020, and ultimately could deliver up to 15,791,131 t CO2 eq per annum savings for Europe.
New products will be produced for application to agricultural crops that develop the concept of organo-mineral fertiliser (OMF) reported by Gedara et al 2009. This presentation will describe the field experiments being undertaken as part of the END-O-SLUDG project to assess the agronomic performance of these novel fertiliser materials on commercial crops of grass cut for silage and forage maize at Broxton in Cheshire. Previous work on forage maize and oilseed rape treated with organo mineral fertilisers produced statistically similar crop yields compared to conventional fertilisers. The results of experiments carried out in the 2010/11 growing season are presented.
Key words
Fertiliser, biosolid, crop yield, grass silage, winter wheat, forage maize
Introduction
Over recent years inorganic fertilisers have often been used in preference to biosolids due to their reliability and ease of use. However, the cost of inorganic products is ever rising leading to a surge in interest of biosoilds once again. The current price of inorganic fertiliser is approximately £1/kg Nitrogen, 95p/kg phosphate and 60p/kg of potash.
The most recent statistics for England from June 2011 indicate that there are approximately 4 million hectares of cropped land with cereals and oilseeds accounting for 64% and 18% of the total cropped area respectively (Table 1). Although the area of forage maize at 132000 hectares is relatively small, the crop provides an excellent opportunity to utilise manures and biosolids. The biosolids can be incorporated when the previous cereal stubble is ploughed in prior to sowing in mid April to early May.
