Heat Energy and Gas Emissions during Composting of Sewage Sludge

Grażyna Żukowska, Jakub Mazurkiewicz, Magdalena Myszura and Wojciech Czekała
Additional contact information
Grażyna Żukowska: Faculty of Agrobioengineering Institute of Soil Science and Environment Shaping, University of Life Sciences in Lublin, ul. St. Leszczynskiego 7, 20-069 Lublin, Poland
Jakub Mazurkiewicz: Institute of Biosystems Engineering, Poznan University of Life Sciences, Wojska Polskiego 50, 60-627 Poznan, Poland
Magdalena Myszura: Faculty of Agrobioengineering Institute of Soil Science and Environment Shaping, University of Life Sciences in Lublin, ul. St. Leszczynskiego 7, 20-069 Lublin, Poland
Wojciech Czekała: Institute of Biosystems Engineering, Poznan University of Life Sciences, Wojska Polskiego 50, 60-627 Poznan, Poland

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 24, 1-13

Abstract: The composting of sewage sludge and maize straw mixtures was investigated in this study. The aim was to analyze the influence of different proportions of sewage sludge and maize straw in the mixtures on composting process dynamics (expressed by heat production) and gas emissions. The results showed that all examined mixtures reached a strong thermophilic phase of composting; however, the lowest dynamic of temperature growth was observed in the case of the biggest sewage sludge content (60% of sewage sludge in the composting mixture). The ammonia concentration inside bioreactor chambers was directly related to the content of sewage sludge in the composted mixture. Excessive contents of sewage sludge had a considerable effect on very low C/N ratios and high losses through ammonia emissions. Tests were carried out in reactors with a capacity of 160 dm 3 under controlled conditions. All mixtures were aerated by the average air-flow of about 2.5 dm 3 ?min −1 , i.e., the minimum air-flow that allows a temperature of about 70 °C to be reached and a sufficiently long thermophilic phase, which ensures proper composting.

Keywords: sewage sludge; composting; gas emissions; heat energy; C/N ratio (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/24/4782/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/24/4782/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:24:p:4782-:d:298200

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().