Journal of Environmental Management 282 (2021) 111966

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Journal of Environmental Management

journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jenvman

Incineration of sewage sludge and recovery of residue ash as building

material: A valuable option as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic
S. Ducoli, A. Zacco, E. Bontempi *
INSTM and Chemistry for Technologies Laboratory, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Brescia, Via Branze, 38, 25123, Brescia, Italy

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Circular economy principles were adopted by European Commission, to support a sustainable growth. They
SARS-CoV-2 contain general rules that should be considered in all situations. At present, during pandemic, some waste
COVID-19 disposal practices are under evaluation to guarantee safety conditions.
Sewage sludge ash
For example, in view of the recent results reporting the presence of SARS-CoV-2 virus in sewage sludge, the
Circular economy
ESCAPE approach
possibility that it diffuses in the environment is alarming. The situation may result critical in densely populated
Raw materials cities, which are the largest sources of sewage sludge. In this frame the diffused practice of reuse of this waste in
Sustainability agriculture is under revision.
SDG 11 In this context, incineration may represent a valuable alternative strategy to manage
SDG 12 sewage sludge during pandemic. Indeed, due to thermal treatment, the destruction of organic micropollutants
and pathogens, eventually present in the waste, is guarantee.
Moreover, it is fundamental to highlight that also if the management of sewage sludge changes, the ash
resulting from its combustion may have suitable reuse opportunities, and their landfilling should be avoided.
This work presents the available possibilities of sewage sludge ash recovery in building applications and shows
the results obtained by the analysis of their sustainability. The approach is based on the use of embodied energy
and carbon footprint values, to make a simple and fast new method able to be a suitable tool to support and
promote sustainability also in critical situations (such as pandemic) and when all the information about a
technology are not available, making not possible to perform a full-LCA approach.
This work aims to be not only a reference paper for promotion of strategies able to increase waste management
safety, but also an example showing that circular economy principles should be pursued also if boundary con­
ditions can change.

1. Introduction and consumption (European Inverstment Bank, 2019). However, these

With the expected future global population growth of about 500–750
million per decade, the UNEP’s International Resource Panel predicts
that between 2015 and 2050 material resource use may double (UNEP
and IRP, 2017). Considering its high dependence on import of natural
materials, EU needs to move toward circular economy (CE), to promote
the circular flow and efficient resources manage, to minimize wastage,
and decouple economic growth from materials extraction and con­
sumption. Due to its expected economic, environmental, and social
benefits, the CE goes beyond efficient resource use and recycling, sup­
porting the development of a suitable framework able to promote new
business models. These new models will increase value, use, and life of
materials, products and assets by designing out waste from production
models are not conceived to be effective in critical situations, such as the
pandemic, the global crisis that invested all the world in 2020.
The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-
2) was discovered in China at the end of 2019 and declared to be a
pandemic by World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020. This
disease is mainly transmitted by human-to-human direct interactions
(Bontempi, 2020a) (Bontempi et al., 2020). However, both asymptom­
atic and symptomatic people can spread the infection also through their
urine and excreta (Núñez-Delgado, 2020) and for some of them, viral
RNA can be found in the feces even if it was not still found in the res­
piratory tract (Xiao et al., 2020).
Despite that the SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA does not demonstrate that
the viral particles are still infectious, its presence in the treated

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: elza.bontempi@unibs.it (E. Bontempi).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.111966
Received 9 November 2020; Received in revised form 17 December 2020; Accepted 6 January 2021
Available online 14 January 2021
0301-4797/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
S. Ducoli et al.
wastewater (Wurtzer et al., 2020) strongly suggests that suitable pro­
cedures to manage wastewater and related products must be defined.
Indeed, the most diffused wastewater treatments allow the removal of
suspended solids and organic matter (Droste and Gehr, 2018). Also some
pathogens are generally removed, but with higher efficiency for bacteria
than viruses (Dias et al., 2018). Then, through human excreta, the virus
is transferred to wastewater and it may also spread in the environment.
A recent work has proposed that urban flooding events caused by heavy
rainfalls, with the consequence of sewage overflows, may be also related
to virus transmission (Han and He, 2021).
In this frame the management of sewage sludge (SS), the waste
derived from wastewater treatments, that often is used to enrich agri­
cultural soils, may pose some sanitary issues.
Due to the fact that the main transmission route of SARS-CoV-2
infection was attributed to the inhalation of contaminated aerosols or
droplets (Morawska and Cao, 2020), potential risks of virus transmission
exist mainly for workers in wastewater management plants, that may
directly inhale some contaminated particles (Amoah et al., 2020).
Moreover, also general population may be exposed to infection risks, by
proximity with not properly treated wastewater and/or SS, also
considering a possible direct contact (Kampf et al., 2020). This is also
due to the fact that, despite that the literature has shown that generally
Coronavirus can survive out of living cells for only few days (Kampf
et al., 2020), the potential spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the environment has
posed some concerns related to its potential transferability in the air
(Bontempi, 2020b), in the form of airborne particulate matter (Yang
et al., 2020). The virus transmission possibilities are related to its
capability to remain infectious in aerosol for several hours (van Dor­
emalen et al., 2020).
This problem is noticeable because in several countries SS is re-used
in agriculture, to take advantage of the nutrients it contains, such as
organic matter, nitrogen, and phosphorus. In particular, the major risks
are associated to some of SS not subjected to any kind of disinfection
treatment, before use.
Some authors have supposed that enterovirus in soil can survive also
months depending on the specific environmental conditions, and sub­
sequent to be diffused to surface and ground waters, thus also promoting
their diffusion by ingestion of contaminated water (Yang et al., 2020).
In the reported frame, it is obvious that a suitable treatment strategy
must be identified, mainly in the case of SS management, to reduce the
potential risks of virus transmission, that should be applied primarily
during periods of sanitary crisis, when there is a high amount of infected
people and a high risk of virus spread (Di Maria et al., 2020).
However, as reported for the reduction of CO2 emissions (Le Quéré
et al., 2020), the current pandemic may also represent an opportunity to
support sustainable strategies, as for example material recovery, in
accord with the CE principles. In particular, despite the safety priority, it
is fundamental to proceed in accord with all sustainability pillars, to
propose reasonable alternative that may be adopted also in the next
future. For example, the application of safe procedures to manage waste
that may contain active virus is a current and ongoing need. Indeed, The
Circular Economy Action Plan (adopted in March 2020) committed to
the Commission the revision of the Sewage Sludge Directive.
Among the available strategies for SS management, in the incinera­
tion treatments, the combustion temperature is generally maintained
higher than 850 ◦ C with a waste residence in the furnace larger than 1 h
(Di Maria et al., 2018). This ensures the inactivation of the SARS-CoV-2
(Chin et al., 2020) resulting in a safe waste treatment strategy. Incin­
eration is reported to convert 1 ton of dewatered SS into around 100 kg
of sterile SSA (Nakić et al., 2017).
At the present, in some nations, health institutes recommended
incineration as the priority option for management of contaminated
wastes (Gruppo di Lavoro ISS Ambiente-Rifiuti COVID-19, 2020).
Moreover, it is clear that the need to decrease the environmental
impact of the waste management applied strategies is crucial and
fundamental also in the pandemic.
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Journal of Environmental Management 282 (2021) 111966
Fig. 1 reports the SS production and disposal strategies for several EU
countries (data from EUROSTAT, 2016). It results that SS incineration is
applied as the main management option only in Austria, Germany, and
Netherland.
Thermal treatments (incineration, pyrolysis, gasification) of SS are
disposal alternatives that will gain importance in the future due to the
important volume (up to 90%) and mass (up to 70%) reduction, and the
sterility of the final obtained by-product, that can be often considered as
an inert residue (Lynn et al., 2015).
SS incineration is the most used thermal technology, able to recover
waste and energy. In some cases, additional fuel (other than SS) is
required, mainly when high-water content SS is used. In other cases SS is
co-incinerated with municipal solid waste (Assi et al., 2020a).
Moreover, it is also possible to reuse the ash derived from the
incineration, i.e. the sewage sludge ash (SSA).
The possibility to recover and reuse SSA is fundamental, because it
allows to apply CE concepts also as a consequence of a change of SS
management, due to the pandemic.
In particular, the SSA recovery is in accord with European Green
Deal and the 2020 Annual Sustainable Growth Strategy, allowing not
only to obtain the material and waste recovery, but also to increase the
sustainability of the water sector.
Depending on its physic-chemical characteristics, mainly six uses of
SSA are proposed in literature:
- for phosphorus (P) extraction for soils organic amendment;
- for adsorbents production;
- as additives in mortars and concrete (as a pozzolanic material);
- in the manufacture of light aggregates (as for example in substitution
of clay);
- in the manufacture of ceramic materials;
- in the manufacture of Portland cement clinker (Donatello and
Cheeseman, 2013).
With the exception of the first two applications mentioned, almost all
the proposed applications concern building sector. At present, some
technologies for P extraction from SSA have been already industrially
established (Schipper et al., 2001) (Weigand et al., 2013). For example,
in Germany SSA is recovered to obtain materials, to be used as fertilizer
(Hermann, 2013).
In the countries where the agricultural applications of SSA are still
not applied, other reuse strategies have been also proposed, as for
example in building sector (Smol et al., 2015).
The aim of this paper is to promote the CE principles also in crisis
times and try to couple safety with environmental sustainability. In
particular, wastewater disposal is a fundamental issue in the transition
to a CE model, being a carrier of energy (it can be used as fuel) and
materials (it contains valuable resource).
For this purpose, this work presents the environmental advantages
that can take place in the SSA reuse especially addressed to building
materials. Indeed, despite that several papers have already presented the
possibilities of SSA reuse, at the best of authors knowledge, the evalu­
ation of the sustainability of SSA reuse is still an open issue. This work
has the ambition to be not only a reference paper contributing to pro­
mote strategies able to increase the safety in the management of some
wastes (that may represent a transmission way for the SARS-CoV-2
virus), but also an example that safety and environmental advantages
can be coupled in choosing the most suitable actions, with the aim to
increase the sustainability.
To support this strategy, it is possible to use a simplified approach,
able to evaluate the sustainability of a material, using only two pa­
rameters (embodied energy - EE and carbon footprint - CF). This new
tool was recently proposed in view of a need of less onerous method (for
example in comparison to a full-LCA analysis) able to evaluate the sus­
tainability of new treatments (Bontempi, 2017a). Then, it may be a
support for rapid evaluation of new business strategies, accelerating the
S. Ducoli et al.
Fig. 1. Sewage sludge (SS) production and disposal strategies for several EU countries (data from EUROSTAT, 2016).
industries resilience, in critical situations, such as the COVID-19
pandemic, with great attention to sustainability.
The proposed approach may allow to introduce new indicators in the
circular economy monitoring framework, that may not be only related to
the waste recovery, but also to be extended to evaluate the circularity in
the water management strategies. Indeed, the SS use in farming is
currently under investigation in EU: a public consultation, that has been
opened in November 2020 aims to understand the views of the citizens
and stakeholders about sewage sludge land spread.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. SSA characteristics and possible applications in building sector
The extraction of natural materials (as for example aggregates) that
are used in building applications is coupled with serious negative
environmental effects. In particular, cement industry was evaluated as
responsible for a significant portion of CO2 emissions, and of a large
quantity of energy consumption. With the aim to limit the construction
industry environmental impact, also the reduction of natural materials
extraction is fundamental (Costa and Ribeiro, 2020). Indeed, CO2
emissions can be limited by using ash as an additive or a substitute in
cement production. Obviously the chemical and mineralogical proper­
ties of the ash must be adequate for its use as an alternative.
For the present activity, it is important to highlight that mineralog­
ical, chemical, and physical properties of SSA can be fluctuating (Cong
et al., 2020). In general, SiO2, CaO and Al2O3 are the main SSA com­
ponents, with the possible presence of calcium, iron oxides, and phos­
phorous oxides, in different amounts. Despite its high variability, due to
different wastewater sources origin and treatments performed in the
wastewater plants, the SSA composition is very interesting also consid­
ering that it is composed of crystalline (the main are generally quartz,
magnetite, calcite, anhydride, and hydroxyapatite) and amorphous
phases (Cyr et al., 2007). The amorphous (ranging from 35 to 75%)
(Cong et al., 2020) is reported to be mainly composed of silicon,
aluminum, calcium, phosphorous and iron oxides (Dyer et al., 2011).
This makes the SSA a latent hydraulic or pozzolanic by-product, with the
possibility to reuse it in construction sector, with some limitations
related to the functional properties of obtained composites (Chen et al.,
2013).
Recently it was proposed that the presence of phosphorus can pro­
vide favorable conditions for the formation of tricalcium silicate (C3S),
one of the major components in Portland cement (Xu et al., 2014).
Manufacturing building materials from SSA, during pandemic, is
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Journal of Environmental Management 282 (2021) 111966
potentially viable for several reasons:
a) building industry uses massive amount of construction materials, it
guarantees the consuming of large scale SSA production, that may
occur in pandemic conditions (when no possibilities of other solu­
tions for SS management are available);
b) the cost of landfill disposal is increasing during the pandemic, due to
the large amount of waste that cannot be recycled for the contami­
nation risk (anti-contagion policy).
c) the environmental costs of natural resources are increasing due to a
decreasing sustainability in the use of raw materials.
The possibility to incinerate SS with solid municipal waste, allows to
manage it also in urban areas, with a reduced transport complexity (Assi
et al., 2020c).
The SSA possible applications include land reclamation (Lin et al.,
2018), geotechnical applications (Chen and Lin, 2009), cement (Lin and
Lin, 2005), and road pavements (Shirodkar et al., 2011), because SSA
can show pozzolanic properties (Benassi et al., 2019). It can be also used
in substitution of raw material for the production of lightweight
aggregate (Cheeseman and Virdi, 2005).
2.2. Proposal of an evaluation strategy based on embodied energy and
carbon footprint
In the ESCAPE (standing for Evaluation of Sustainability of material
substitution using CArbon footPrint by a simplified approach) tool, the
“embodied energy” (EE) and “CO2 footprint” (CF) are used with the aim
to evaluate the environmental performances of a new material (as for
example a recovered material, obtained from waste) and comparing it
with a corresponding natural resource (that may be substituted by this
by-product).
EE is calculated by considering all the direct and indirect energies
mandatory to produce a material (generally referring to 1 kg of pro­
duced material) (Brown and Herendeen, 1996) (Ducoli et al., 2020).
CF is calculated by accounting the mass of CO2 discharged into the
atmosphere per unit mass of produced material (units kgCO2-eq/kg)
(Ashby, 2013) (Ducoli et al., 2020).
Differently to natural materials, EE and CF for waste (SSA in the
present case) can be assumed to be zero. Indeed, the process of SSA
generation does not interfere with the environment, because it concerns
a waste management strategy. Then SSA is a by-product of the sludge
incineration process and its reuse avoid its landfilling. As a consequence,
the environmental impacts associated with the SSA management are
S. Ducoli et al.
associated and limited with transport, that it is not accounted in this
specific approach. Indeed, this cannot be quantified, a priori. Only
eventual treatments procedures, necessary prior to use SSA in final ap­
plications are considered and evaluated by the proposed methodology,
with the evaluation of EE and CF associated to all steps.
A sustainability index, to quantify the environmental benefits of a
raw material substitution, was defined on the basis of EE and CF of the
two compared materials.
The ESCAPE index is:
ESCAPE index = [log (EEraw /(MJ/kg) ) − log (EEsub /(MJ/kg) )
+ log (CFraw ) − log (CFsub ) ]/2 (1)
where:
EEraw is the embodied energy of the raw material in MJ/kg.
EEsub is the embodied energy of the newly proposed material in MJ/
kg.
CFraw is the CO2 footprint of the raw material in kgCO2-eq/kg.
CFsub is the CO2 footprint of the newly proposed material in kgCO2-
eq/kg.
If the ESCAPE index results positive, the newly proposed material
can be considered more sustainable in comparison to the selected
reference one (that can be a natural resource or a commercial material).
The detailed description of all the procedure and its validation can be
found in the (Ducoli et al., 2020) (Bontempi, 2017b) (Bontempi, 2017a).
For this work, data about EE and CF were provided by CES Selector
2019 – Granta Design Limited.
3. Results and discussion
In the case of a lack of a suitable site for land disposal, as in urban
areas, SS can be incinerated and the derived SSA can be proposed as raw
material in building applications. Indeed, SSA composition generally
falls around the latent hydraulic and pozzolanic regions, supporting its
use as a supplementary cementitious material (Lynn et al., 2015).
In several cases SSA is added for partial substitution of raw materials,
such as for example Portland Cement (the substitution is generally in the
amount of some percent) and no treatments are required before its reuse.
With 10–20% of SSA in blended mixtures, it was found a slight but
acceptable reduction in workability and mechanical strength compared
with samples made without ash (Chang et al., 2020).
In the last years, the increase of the pozzolanic properties of SSA is
one of the main aims of the recent proposed research to promote the
reuse of this waste. In particular, incineration of SS at relatively high
temperatures (generally higher than 700 ◦ C) has a good effect in the
pozzolanic properties (Yanguatin et al., 2017), but with some risks of
crystallization of amorphous phase, with the formation, for example, of
crystalline silica, that may reduce the pozzolanic reactivity of SSA
(Tantawy et al., 2012), making the identification of the suitable incin­
eration temperature sometimes hard and crucial to achieve the optimum
balanced of SSA performances in terms of pozzolanic activity and
reasonable treatment cost. Then, in some cases, a pretreatment of the
obtained ash, after the incineration process, may be necessary to pro­
mote the SSA reuse (Monzó et al., 2003).
As a consequence, the proposed SSA reuse strategies must account
for these treatments to evaluate the real convenience of the possible
employ of SSA as a supplementary cementitious material.
Literature presents several possible applications of SSA and also
propose different pretreatment strategies, to improve its physical
property, chemical activity, and cementitious characteristics, such as
thermal treatment (also by using microwave), physical modification (as
for example mechanical granulation), and chemical activation (Cong
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Journal of Environmental Management 282 (2021) 111966
et al., 2020).
The reported procedures were selected from the literature with the
attention to evaluate different proposed strategies and application
fields. P-recovery technologies were not considered (they are evaluated
in another paper specifically designed for this application (Fahimi et al.,
2021). For a comparison with the application in building materials, also
the proposed method to reuse SSA as adsorbent is considered and
evaluated.
Table 1 reports the selected procedures with a summary of the pro­
posed treatments and the reference. The results about ESCAPE index
evaluated for the SSA, in comparison with the proposed raw material it
substitutes are also shown.
Positive results in the index evaluation highlight that the proposed
by-product (SSA) can be recognized to be more sustainable in compar­
ison to the considered corresponding raw material. On the contrary,
with a negative index it is possible to conclude that the proposed
treatment seems to make SSA still too onerous to be proposed. Table 1
shows that some different results can be obtained.
In particular, for a reuse of SSA in building sector, it is evident that
the ESCAPE index results positive only if some mechanical treatments
(grinding) are performed (treatment P1, in Table 1) (Nakic, 2018). On
the contrary, technologies aimed to improve the performances of SSA, in
terms of pozzolanic activity and toxicity, shows an ESCAPE index lower
than − 1, making the proposed strategies not suitable to obtain sus­
tainable materials (treatment P2 and P3, in Table 1) (Cong et al., 2020).
Similar considerations can be extended to technologies aimed to use
SSA in ceramic and clay products manufacturing (treatment n.4 e n.5 in
Table 1, respectively) (Tang et al., 2018) (Ottosen et al., 2020).
The treatment P6, reported as a comparison, proposes the SSA as
adsorbent, in substitution of activated carbon (Wang et al., 2019). Also
in this case, the use of thermal energy to activate the SSA appears to be
not suitable to obtain a sustainable material. Fig. 2 reports EE and CF for
some materials (data were derived from CES Selector, 2019 – Granta
Design Limited) and for recycled materials obtained from the processes
reported in this paper. This shows, in accord with data reported in
Table 1, that the most sustainable processes are those that involve only
mechanical treatments, avoiding thermal annealing (P1 and P5).
Moreover, if the index presents low negative values (generally when
it is higher than − 0.5) more in-depth considerations and probably some
revisions of the proposed synthesis steps (for example reducing the
selected temperatures) may be proposed, with the aim to improve the
sustainability of the obtained materials (then obtaining a positive
index). In addition, also the total amount of recovered waste that may be
reused in the mixture with the considered matrix (for example cement)
should be evaluated, due to its influence on the index.
The proposed method can be considered a preliminary analysis in the
design (or eco-design) strategy of the product, allowing to identify the
most expensive phases from an energy point of view and to optimize the
treatment parameters. A positive or negative result of this first evalua­
tion suggests whether the product can be sustainable or not in com­
parison to the natural material to be substituted.
A negative result indicates that the treatments to which the recovery
material is subjected are too energetic and make it unsustainable
compared to the raw material. Therefore, the processing steps need a
revision. On the contrary, a positive result suggests a good sustainability
and encourages further deeper analysis.
For example, as we have reported before, Portland cement substi­
tution with SSA usually concerns a small material percentage (generally
only 10% of final mixture). The same consideration regards also other
substitution, for example the partial substitution of dry clay with SSA for
clay products manufacturing. This means that a major part of the
mixture is represented by raw material and therefore the potential
benefit, in terms of sustainability, of SSA reuse should be re-evaluated
based on the actual extent of the replacement.
In Table 2, processes P1 and P5 are considered. They are the two
processes that show a positive ESCAPE index, in Table 1. In Table 2,
S. Ducoli et al. Journal of Environmental Management 282 (2021) 111966

Table 1
Sustainability evaluation for six proposed treatments of SSA, through the calculation of ESCAPE index. The color scale helps un­
derstanding the sustainability index. The most expensive processes are indicated in orange, while the most sustainable processes are
indicated in light blue.

Fig. 2. Embodied energy and carbon footprint comparison between some conventional materials (data from CES Selector, 2019 – Granta Design Limited) and treated
SSA as proposed in the article. P1 and P5, involving only mechanical steps, seem to be the most sustainable treatments.

ESCAPE index values are recalculated for the mixtures of SSA and raw treated (lightly grinded), gives a clearly positive ESCAPE index (see
materials prepared as reported in the corresponding bibliography. Table 1), expressing the sustainability of the new material compared to
It can be noticed that process P1, in which SSA are only mechanically Portland cement; however, considering a 10% SSA mixture (see

5
S. Ducoli et al.
Table 2
Sustainability comparison of different mixtures of treated SSA and related raw materials. The color scale helps understanding the
sustainability index. The most expensive processes are indicated in orange, while the most sustainable processes are indicated in
light blue.
Table 2), the index is drastically reduced, assuming a value close to zero,
due to the low environmental gain obtained if only 10% of the raw
material is substituted.
Similarly, when different percentages of dry clay are substituted with
SSA mechanically treated (process P5), the final mixtures assume posi­
tive ESCAPE indexes, but they are lower if compared to the index of
treated SSA alone.
Examples reported in Table 2 show that it would be also possible to
increase the amount of SSA that may be reused, till to reach the largest
quantity, but with great attention to maintain positive (or near to zero)
the ESCAPE index. This will allow to apply a new and simple eco-design
procedure with the aim to recover materials, that otherwise may be
destined to landfilling.
After the specific comments about data reported in Tables 1 and 2,
concerning the obtained results, some general considerations must also
be introduced regarding the proposed applied approach.
The ESCAPE index is evaluated without considering that SSA sub­
stitution may affect the functional properties of the obtained final
product. This is also clearly indicated in almost all the considered arti­
cles, when the proper amount of SSA is chosen for raw materials sub­
stitution. As a consequence, in the case that different properties of the
final products are obtained, in comparison to the reference (as for
example, deteriorated durability or decreased mechanical properties), if
SSA is directly compared with another material, it is necessary to include
normalization factors in the index evaluation for distinguishing the
quality of the final obtained products.
Furthermore, the proposed approach for the sustainability of the SSA
reuse is realized considering the basic proposed treatments that are re­
ported in literature. It is evident that it can be improved if additional
steps are need before the SSA recycle. In this frame, it is important to
highlight that, despite several studies have proposed that SSA can be
classified as a not hazardous material (Lin et al., 2018), due to the
thermal degradation of pathogen and bacteria eventually present in SS,
sometimes SSA can contain leachable heavy metals. A very recent paper
(Assi et al., 2020b) shows that in the co-incineration of SS and municipal
solid waste, the derived fly ash can contain higher amount of leachable
Pb and Zn, in comparison to the incineration of only municipal waste,
depending on the quality of original SS. Then it is fundamental to
evaluate the toxicity of SSA, before to propose its reuse. In some cases,
additional treatments may be required to stabilize SSA. However, they
can be integrated in the proposed method for the sustainability evalu­
ation. For example, the treatments P2 and P3 reported in Table 1 has the
advantage to reduce the heavy metals leachability. However, it requires
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Journal of Environmental Management 282 (2021) 111966
annealing at high temperature, making the process high energy inten­
sive. In the other evaluated technologies, SSA stabilization is not
considered. In this frame it is also important to highlight that the natural
ash aging process, that involves carbon dioxide sequestration and pH
reducing, is reported to improve the leachability of heavy metals such as
Pb and Zn (Assi et al., 2019), and can be used to stabilize this waste with
no additional chemicals and costs. It may be considered in particular
application SSA that need also chemical stabilization.
In summary, the simplicity and the flexibility of the proposed strat­
egy allow to show that the sanitary advantages arising from SS incin­
eration can be coupled with other advantages in terms of raw materials
substitution, if SSA is recovered and reused, with the result to promote
also the population resilience in terms to reach the 11 and 12 sustainable
development goals (SDGs sustainable cities and communities and ensure
sustainable consumption and production patterns) during pandemic.
This approach will allow to highlight the most promising reusing
application fields, able to support the circular economy principles.
4. Conclusions
The EU Commission aims to define new directives for water and
wastewater management to protect water resources and environment,
but this needs new approaches and strategies, able to be applied also
when boundary conditions can change (as for example during
pandemic).
This paper aims to support the CE strategies also in particular con­
ditions, when safety is the priority.
Although in many EU Countries SS incineration is not yet the primary
choice, this is the safest option for the disposal of this waste, especially in
times of sanitary crisis, such as the one we are currently experiencing
due to the pandemic infection from SARS-CoV-2. In fact, the high tem­
peratures of the treatment guarantee the inactivation of the virus and
prevent any possible accidental spread into the environment.
With a view to circular economy, many authors have studied the
recovery of ash deriving from the incineration of sewage sludge for their
reuse, especially in the building sector.
This paper has proposed and discussed an analysis of the sustain­
ability of such recovery strategies, based on the recently proposed
ESCAPE index. This index, that compares the “embodied energy” (EE)
and “CO2 footprint” (CF) of new materials and natural resources, allows
a simple and fast preliminary analysis of sustainability, in order to assess
the best treatment conditions.
The results of this analysis (that can be considered a pre-screening
S. Ducoli et al.
method, before to make LCA) seems to show that only mechanical
treatments of SSA allow to obtain sustainable materials, while thermal
treatments usually require too much energy. In addition, optimizing the
process to obtain a new, more sustainable material is the first funda­
mental step; however, if the new material is not used as it is for real
applications, but is mixed with the standard reference material, the
sustainability of this substitution should be reassessed based of the
extent of the replacement.
Funding
This research was partially supported by FANGHI project, financed
by Regione Lombardia, in the frame of the call HUB Ricerca e
Innovazione.
Authors contribution
All the authors contributed to the paper presented methodology and
conceptualization. They all contributed to data analysis and paper
writing.
Financial disclosure
This research was partially supported by FANGHI project, financed
by Regione Lombardia, in the frame of the call HUB Ricerca e
Innovazione.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
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