Innovative Treatment Processes for Emerging Contaminants Removal from Sewage Sludge

This chapter deals with an environmental aspect not sufficiently taken into account by the scientific community as well as the economy productive sectors: the removal of emerging contaminants (ECs) from sewage sludge. The most common ECs that can be found in the sludge, their adsorption mechanisms, and the most suitable removal treatments, in such order, are analyzed and discussed in the following pages. An accurate scientific literature survey has highlighted, primarily, that the anaerobic digestion (AD) process is the most common treatment used to stabilize sewage sludge and, secondly, that such process is not appropriate for properly treating ECs. Therefore, further treatments are required to be coupled with AD for removing ECs. Among all possible treatments, those innovative, chemical (ozonation, hydrogen peroxide, Fenton) as well as thermal (hydrothermal liquefaction) are discussed and their performance is compared.