Department Sanitation, Water and Solid Waste for Development

After the definition of performance goals and deriving estimations of faecal sludge (FS) quantities and characteristics, then treatment technologies can be designed. Because available space in urban areas is very limited, and most current FS treatment technologies are space intensive, our research in this area focuses on how to increase the treatment capacity of existing technologies. This can increase the amount of sludge treated, and/or reduce the required footprint of treatment plants, in addition to optimizing technical aspects of resource recovery.

One of the most important treatment objectives in FSM is dewatering. FS is mainly comprised of water, and water is heavy and expensive to transport. Discharging polluted water into the environment also has significant negative impacts. Dewatering FS is required prior to its being used in resource recovery applications, such as composting or combustion as a fuel.