Changes in sewage sludge carbon forms along a treatment stream

Smith, M. T. E., Smernik, R. J., Merrington, G. and Tibbett, M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0143-2190 (2008) Changes in sewage sludge carbon forms along a treatment stream. Chemosphere, 72 (6). pp. 981-985. ISSN 00456535 doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2008.02.062

Abstract/Summary

The behaviour and fate of macronutrients and pollutants in sewage sludge applied to the land are affected by the chemical composition of the sludge organic matter, which in turn is influenced by both sewage source and by sewage treatment processes. In this study, 13C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy was used to characterise the organic matter of sludges collected at three different points along the treatment stream of a municipal sewage works with a domestic catchment. Sludge at the first point, an undigested liquid (UL) sludge, had a substantially different composition to the anaerobically digested (AD) and dewatered sludge cake (DC) materials, which were similar to each other. In particular, the UL sludge contained more alkyl C than the AD or DC sludges. All three sludges were found to contain mobile alkyl C that is poorly observed using the cross polarisation (CP) technique, necessitating the use of the less sensitive, but more quantitatively reliable direct polarisation (DP) technique to obtain accurate distributions of C types.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/44917
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Agriculture, Policy and Development > Department of Sustainable Land Management > Centre for Agri-environmental Research (CAER)
Publisher	Elsevier
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