Mud lab
Mud lab
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INFONAME:Sewage sludge bottom ash
CATEGORYCATEGORY:Combustion
RADIO_BUTTON_UNCHECKEDSECTOR:Biomass power generation
VOLCANOUK TOTAL:14,300 tonnes (data)
FLAGSITES:1
MAPREGION:Greater London
WidgetsTYPE:Combustion residue
LabelDESCRIPTION:Coarse ash collected from the bottom of the furnace during combustion of sewage sludge for power generation
PINEWC CODES:

10 01 01, 10 01 15

SCIENCETYPICAL COMPOSITION:
SiO231.8%Na2O1.6%
Al2O317.8%P2O515.3%
CaO12.0%Fe2O313.8%
MgO3.2%TiO21.3%
K2O1.8%SO31.4%
  LOI1.4%

(Donatello, 2009)

TENANCYMINEROLOGY:Amorphous, quartz, whitlockite (Donatello, 2009)
StreamAPPEARANCE:Granular
LINEAR_SCALEPARTICLE SIZE:< 2mm
WYSIWYGNOTES: 

Sewage sludge is the residual material generated from treating waste water. It is mainly composed of human waste, alongside a smaller proportion of industrial and food-processing effluents and storm water run-off (Defra, 2018).

In many countries, the material is incinerated, producing an ash that is rich in SiO2, Al2O3, Fe2O3, P2O5 and CaO (Suzuki et al., 1997).

In the current UK context however, incineration of sewage sludge is largely being phased out and nearly all of the sludge generated is recycled to agricultural land (Liu et al., 2021) as a means of returning nutrients to the soil. Sewage sludge must be treated before it can be used as a fertiliser, which is increasingly done via anaerobic digestion, capturing useful methane gas in the process.

VisibilityFURTHER READING:(Donatello, 2009)
(Suzuki et al., 1997)
(Liu et al., 2021)