In an overview of a variety of life-cycle assessments dealing with sewage sludge the trend showing that agricultural use is less favourable compared to incineration is reinforced. The principal disadvantages comprise a considerably higher contaminant input into the environmental medium soil, and higher acidification and eutrophication due to the increased ammonia release from agriculturally utilised sewage sludge compared to inorganic fertilisers. The various alternatives, the majority of which are based on incineration methods, in turn display numerous advantages and disadvantages compared to each other.
The question of agricultural utilisation versus incineration has been the object of disputes among experts for more than twenty years. During this period IFEU has also compiled several life-cycle assessments and helped stimulate the discussion of the environmental assessment of alternative options. In 2009 IFEU cooperated in a policy study on the state-of-the-art in sewage sludge treatment on behalf of the municipal urban sewage system operators of the cities of Augsburg, Frankfurt, Karlsruhe, Mannheim, Munich, Stuttgart and Zurich. IFEU’s task was to perform the ecological assessment for the various treatment techniques and technique combinations, and to incorporate the results into the overall assessment, applying technical, economical and operating criteria. The scarceness of the phosphorus resource has always been a point emphasised in the life-cycle assessments. Phosphorus recovery processes have thus formed a fixed component of many life-cycleassessments since 2005. The life cycles of these processes were exhaustingly assessed as part of the BMBF/BMU-funded Phobe projects.
This paper represents a summary of those studies. The primary aim is to provide an up-todate environmental evaluation of the technical options for sewage sludge disposal compared to agricultural utilisation. In addition, a life-cycle assessment overview of phosphorus recovery processes is presented. This is closely linked to the core problem of whether the phosphorus recovery route can represent an ecologically optimised alternative to direct sewage sludge application to fields and to sewage sludge incineration.
| Copyright: | © Thomé-Kozmiensky Verlag GmbH |
| Quelle: | Waste Management, Volume 3 (Oktober 2012) |
| Seiten: | 10 |
| Preis: | € 0,00 |
| Autor: | Dipl.-Geoökologe Joachim Reinhardt Dipl.-Biol. Horst Fehrenbach |
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© Springer Vieweg | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH (12/2025)
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© Springer Vieweg | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH (12/2025)
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© Springer Vieweg | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH (12/2025)
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