Journal of Environmental Management 325 (2023) 116412

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Journal of Environmental Management

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

Research article

Fifty years of sewage sludge management research: Mapping researchers’

motivations and concerns
Marzieh Bagheri a, *, Torben Bauer b, Linus Ekman Burgman c, Elisabeth Wetterlund a
a
Division of Energy Science, Luleå University of Technology, 97187, Luleå, Sweden
b
Waste Science and Technology, Luleå University of Technology, 97187, Luleå, Sweden
c
Department of Thematic Studies, Technology and Social Change at Linköping University, 58183, Linköping, Sweden

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

Keywords: Sewage sludge management is torn between a desire for pollution prevention and reuse of a valuable resource.
Land application Reconciling these interests in sustainable management is a challenge for researchers. This study focuses on how
Energy recovery research on sewage sludge management practices has evolved and scrutinizes how this research is interlinked
Phosphorus
with concerns and societal issues such as contaminants, economic efficiency, and legislation. Based on published
Legislation
academic papers on sewage sludge management between 1971 and 2019, this study found four trends in research
Resource recovery
Biosolid management focused on sewage sludge management: a decreasing interest in disposal (landfilling and sea dumping), a
dominant interest in land application, a growing interest in sewage sludge as product, and a stable interest in
energy recovery. Research on disposal focuses on increasing sludge volumes, legislative changes, and economic
challenges with an interest in waste co-treatment. Research on land application concerns nutrient use and
contaminants, mainly heavy metals. Research on sewage sludge as a product focuses on the extraction of certain
resources and less on use of sewage sludge specifically. Research on energy recovery of sewage sludge focuses on
volume reduction rather than contaminants. Two-thirds of the papers are detailed studies aiming to improve
single technologies and assessing single risks or benefits. As management of sewage sludge is multifaceted, the
narrow focus resulting from detailed studies promotes some concerns while excluding others. Therefore, this
study highlights potential gaps such as the combination of nutrient use and disposal and energy recovery and
nutrient use.

1. Introduction
Sewage sludge is waste from wastewater treatment, a process
designed to lessen risks to health and the environment. Sewage sludge is
also a potential source of agricultural nutrients (i.e., fertilizers) and
energy through anaerobic digestion and combustion. Combining these
goals to manage sustainable sewage sludge is difficult and controversial
(Hamlin, 1980; Mason-Renton et al., 2019). For example, although the
United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs) promote a sus­
tainable society, managing sustainable sewage according to SDGs is
challenging. Central to sanitary infrastructure is the requirement to
guarantee “availability and sustainable management of water and
sanitation for all” (SDG6) and “[g]ood health and well-being” (SDG3),
but using rather than disposing waste requires disconnecting human
production from natural degradation to “[e]nsure sustainable con­
sumption and production patterns” (SDG12). Nutrient recycling is
closely related to the goal of “[z]ero hunger” (SDG2) through the use of
renewable fertilizers in food production, and energy recovery through,
for example, anaerobic digestion can help ensure “[a]ffordable and
clean energy” (SDG7). Sewage sludge could contain unwanted sub­
stances that reflect consumption habits, infrastructure design, business
practices, and atmospheric deposition (Kirchmann et al., 2017; Sharma
et al., 2017). However, disposal of sewage sludge could threaten “[l]ife
below water” (SDG14) and “[l]ife on land” (SDG15), making environ­
mentally safe management of sewage sludge a challenging requirement.
That is, many SDGs need to be considered simultaneously even though
they might be incompatible.
In 2017, 45 million tons of dry sewage sludge (MtDS) production was
reported on a global scale (Gao et al., 2020). Besides population growth
in Europe, implementing the urban wastewater treatment Directive
(1991) resulted in an increasing sewage sludge production. For instance,
in 1992, the European union produced 5.5 MtDS, while in 2010, this

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: Marzieh.bagheri@ltu.se (M. Bagheri).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.116412
Received 19 May 2022; Received in revised form 15 September 2022; Accepted 27 September 2022
Available online 20 October 2022
0301-4797/© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
M. Bagheri et al.
number increased to 10.1 MtDS (Garrido-Baserba et al., 2015), with an
estimation to exceed 13 MtDS by 2020 (Kelessidis and Stasinakis, 2012).
In China, the average annual sewage sludge production had a growth
rate of 13% from 2007 to 2013, and 6.25 MtDS production was reported
in China in 2013, while the estimation for 2020 reaches almost 40 MtDS
(Lishan et al., 2018).
Recent reviews of sewage sludge management research showed an
increased scholarly focus on nutrient recycling and, more specifically,
extraction of specific nutrients (Harder et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2017).
Harder et al. (2019) state that “[r]oughly since the mid 2000s, efforts
towards nutrient extraction have intensified” (p. 27) and that these ef­
forts align with a general trend towards thermal treatment. Parallel with
this trend, research on thermal treatment of sewage sludge has increased
(Gao et al., 2020; Schnell et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2017), revealing that
challenges associated with sewage sludge management can be addressed
with thermal treatment:
The quantity and diversity of organic pollutants can be enormous. All
this increases the time of preparation, analysis and of course cost of
whole process of management. [ …] Therefore dealing with sewage
sludge which is processed with high temperature is simpler. (Michał
Cieslik et al., 2015, p. 13f)
The trend towards thermal treatment of sewage sludge and nutrient
recycling could be seen as an example of SDGs being addressed simul­
taneously (Shaddel et al., 2019) as thermal treatment can destroy
organic contaminants, recover energy, and recycle nutrients. On the
other hand, researchers’ increased focus on thermal treatment might
exclude other important aspects like economic costs, local circum­
stances, and final disposal, and generate a narrow focus on specific
nutrients like phosphorus (Ekman Burgman and Wallsten, 2021).
Controversies arise due to difficulties related to whether sewage
sludge is seen as a resource, which pollutants are seen as dangerous, and
how these pollutants should be managed (Ekman Burgman, 2022).
Therefore, the search for sustainable pathways for sewage sludge man­
agement and use must go beyond the reliance on science and innovation
as politics inevitably play a part in how society will approach the
problems associated with sewage sludge management (Bengtsson and
Tillman, 2004; Oberg and Mason-Renton, 2018). However, research on
sewage sludge management often lacks the value of using a more
comprehensive transdisciplinary approach, one that examines the per­
spectives of many stakeholders (Bergendahl et al., 2018). Increasing the
number of perspectives, however, increases the complexity. When re­
searchers attempting to develop comprehensive decision support tools
for sewage sludge management encounter this complexity, models tend
to become very local (Bertanza et al., 2016) or to have difficulties
including the perspectives of many stakeholders (Chamberlain et al.,
2014).
Apart from reducing complexity by focusing on certain issues, re­
searchers are also entangled with society through economic and political
changes (Jasanoff, 1990). As economic, political, and material condi­
tions limit waste management and constitute certain logics (Gregson and
Forman, 2021; Holmberg and Ideland, 2021; Sjöstrand, 2014; Zsuzsa
Gille, 2009), it should not be far-off to assume that trends and interests
in research on sewage sludge management reflect concerns of other
actors in society. One manifestation of this is legislation as it limits what
is considered desirable technological outcomes while being influenced
by research and technological innovation.
As the management of sewage sludge as a resource is a challenge in
many societies (de Boer et al., 2018; Moya et al., 2019; Nedelciu et al.,
2019), it provides an excellent example of how to critically discuss a
circular economy (cf. Corvellec et al., 2021) and potential conflicting
objectives between pollution prevention and resource use (Johansson
et al., 2020). Thus, scrutinizing how researchers’ interests evolve could
provide insight beyond academia to disclose how concerns are excluded
when focusing on specific management practices. This paper in­
vestigates how the interests of scholars has evolved to identify and
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Journal of Environmental Management 325 (2023) 116412
analyze potential trends in research on sewage sludge management
practices and the impact of such trends and interests. Specifically, this
paper attempts to answer two research questions:
− What are the interests and trends in research on sewage sludge
management practices?
− What are the potential issues with research focusing on specific
sewage sludge management practices?
This study thus offers a broader perspective of motivations and
concerns in research on sewage sludge management, rather than a re­
view of different treatment technologies and the evaluation of their
performance and sustainability. By identifying and discussing which
concerns that are connected to various management practices, as well as
which concerns that are excluded by researchers, this study exposes gaps
in research toward a more sustainable sewage sludge management
where a multitude of issues are included.
2. Methods
Narrative reviews have been accused of being biased towards the
interest and theoretical standpoint of the researcher (Tranfield et al.,
2003). To address this issue, this paper is based on a semi-systematic
review that opens up a variety of literature (Snyder, 2019). The re­
view is organized according to the following steps: i) material collection,
ii) category development, iii) qualitative evaluation and categorization
of the collected material, iv) quantitative evaluation, and v) analysis of
the results.
2.1. Material collection
The material was collected by searching the Scopus database with
the search string [“sewage sludge” management OR biosolid* manage­
ment]. The semi-solid byproducts of wastewater treatment plants are
called biosolids (if used in agriculture) in North America and sewage
sludge in Europe (Goldfarb et al., 1999; Oberg and Mason-Renton,
2018). Both terms were chosen so all published articles regardless of
regional context were considered. The search encompassed the years
2018–2019, resulting in 463 articles (Table 1). To keep the number of
articles in a practical range and choose periods with sufficient distance
to capture trends, the subsequent sampling followed approximately
10-year periods. The aim was to expand the historical overview until the
first available published paper on the Scopus database for the given
search strings, which was found to be published in 1971. Since the
number of articles before 1990 was small, quantitative comparability
was limited. Therefore, all articles published between 1971 and 1990, a
total of 197 articles, were grouped together to have a similar number of
papers as in other periods. Therefore, the final selection of included
material was limited to peer-reviewed articles written in English
matching the search string 1971–1990, 2000–2001, 2009–2010, and
2018–2019. The final material selection is detailed in Table 1.
Table 1
Details on material collected from the Scopus database as basis for this study.
Years Number of articles for Number of articles Removed
“sewage sludge” for “biosolid” irrelevant articlesa
2018–2019 341 95 27
2009–2010 123 91 27
2000–2001 146 41 35
1971–1990 156 1 40
Total 766 228 129
a
Papers out of scope or duplicates were identified and removed during the
evaluation process.
M. Bagheri et al.
2.2. Category development
This study uses a content analysis based on an inductive process to
develop categories (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005). The focus was on the
researchers’ motivations and methods in a broad perspective. This
approach prevents a too narrow focus on a specific aspect that often
entails the exclusion of other inseparable aspects of sewage sludge
management. Therefore, the abstracts of the collected material were
targeted as they contain the essential parts of the papers and allow for
the evaluation of many scientific articles from a wide range of disci­
plines (Truffer et al., 2022). In the cases where categorization by ab­
stract was impossible, the introduction was also included in the
evaluation.
The categories were developed during the evaluation of the material,
where a sample of 40 abstracts was read individually by the three first
authors of this paper and then categorized as problem framing, moti­
vation of the paper, and main management practice. Each author’s
categorization was compared and discussed to develop a common un­
derstanding of the categories. Next, all abstracts were evaluated ac­
cording to the developed definitions of the categories. If some changes
were made during the inductive process of categorizing the material,
abstracts were read again and adapted to the latest standard of
Fig. 1. Main categories and subcategories used for coding the collected material.
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Journal of Environmental Management 325 (2023) 116412
categories during the evaluation. Hence, a set of categories was devel­
oped with clarifying descriptions (when needed). This iterative process
allowed the authors to itemize the main concerns and motivations in
sewage sludge management research and the methods used to address
these concerns.
Recycling valuable resources while protecting the environment is the
center of sustainable sewage sludge management. To fulfill this, not only
technical feasibility and maturity are important, but legislation, social
acceptance and cost also play important roles (Harder et al., 2019;
Shaddel et al., 2019). Although this definition gives no priority to one
resource over others, resource depletion, climate change, population
growth, and urbanization increase the stress on some resources.
Currently, the common practices in sewage sludge management are
grouped in land application, incineration, and landfill, and anaerobic
digestion is known as the most common route for energy recovery from
sewage sludge (Medina-martos et al., 2020; Ross et al., 2021). To discern
interests and trends in research on sewage sludge management and
compare them with ongoing management practices, the focus of the
evaluation in this study was on management practices mentioned in the
collected material. To do this, dominant practices were identified, ac­
cording to criteria described below and shown in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1 shows the final categories and their detailed subcategories,
M. Bagheri et al.
which cover i) contaminants with risk to the environment or health, ii)
challenges other than contaminants, iii) beneficial use of sewage sludge,
iv) improvement of technology, and v) method/type of study. Since
sewage sludge is classified as waste, the category of “contaminants with
risk to environment or health” captures the concerns regarding different
types of contaminants. Other challenges, such as social acceptance,
legislation, greenhouse gas emissions, economic consideration, etc., are
considered in the category of “challenges other than contaminants”. It is
worth mentioning that the results only include the share of different
technologies mentioned in the collected material. Detailed technical
descriptions of transferring sludge to products and energy recovery are
out of the scope of this study. Finally, papers were categorized according
to the country of the corresponding author’s affiliated organization as an
indicator for the location of the study. The material was not limited to
certain countries. Nevertheless, the limitation on English peer-reviewed
scientific articles created a focus on certain countries with high scientific
output.
2.3. Quantitative evaluation and result analysis
The material was organized in a spreadsheet where each abstract was
coded with 1 for the category or categories of concern used to motivate
the paper, the type of study, and country of origin and coded with 0 for
those that did not mention these. This method shares similarities with
the approach applied by Truffer et al. (2022). The coding was aggre­
gated into a matrix where the number of co-occurrences between cate­
gories was quantified. This method tracks how often concerns are
mentioned together and how these co-occurrences change over time.
The strongest co-occurrences, which are used in the results section, are
shown in more detail in Table A2 . As the evaluation categories mainly
aimed to understand researchers’ motivations and concerns, specific
treatment technologies were not analyzed. As an understanding of
different treatment technologies was necessary during the evaluation of
the categories energy recovery and sludge as a product (including
sub-categories), the treatment technologies were analyzed after the
initial assessment. This analysis was conducted by searching the titles of
the concerned articles for certain keywords. Details and results of this
title analysis are given in Table A3. Citation data, which shows how
often a paper has been cited, were also added to indicate where scholarly
attention is focused.
The co-occurrence of categories, their strength, and their changes
over time were used to synthesize the results and itemize trends in
sewage sludge management research. The correlation between practices
and other categories of concern responds to the second research ques­
tions, where the existence or absence of correlations reflects potential
issues.
3. Results and discussion
The results section is divided into two sub-sections, each addressing
one of the research questions. In the first subsection (3.1), the main
sewage sludge management practices and their variation over time and
country are presented. This is followed by a discussion of each of the
practices. The second subsection (3.2) has no further subdivisions. Data
used in the results section are either shown in the figures (Fig. 2–Fig. 6)
or in Table A2 (data on co-occurrences of categories) and Table A3 (data
from the title analysis). For maximum transparency, all 975 analyzed
articles with their categorizations can be found in the supplemented
spreadsheet for further analyses or evaluations.
3.1. Interests and trends in research on sewage sludge management
practice
From the evaluation of research articles, four dominant practices
were identified in sewage sludge management. The first practice is
disposal, which covers studies that concentrate on landfill or sea
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Journal of Environmental Management 325 (2023) 116412
Fig. 2. Variation of the four dominant practices over time. Share of total
studies in a specific period (number of studies in each period is shown
in Table 1).
dumping of sewage sludge and the surrounding challenges. The second
practice is land application, where sewage sludge is taken as a compound
resource utilized in land applications. The third practice is sludge as a
product, which aims to use specific resources in the sludge by extracting
them from the rest of the material mix. As shown in Fig. 1, the practice
sludge as a product is represented by the category “sludge as a product,”
which is a combination of the sub-categories “sludge-based material,”
“fertilizer production,” “nitrogen,” “phosphorus,” and “phosphorus
plant availability.” The fourth practice is energy recovery, which con­
cerns both the recovery of the material’s energy content and the
reduction of sewage sludge volume. Fig. 2 shows the share of studies in
different periods concerned with the four dominant practices. This in­
dicates how the practices vary over time.
Although the interest in energy recovery from sewage sludge has
stayed relatively constant over the periods, the other practices show a
larger variation over time. Disposal shows a declining interest over all
periods and is of no further interest in the most recent period
(2018–2019). Land application creates the overall highest interest in
research but with a declining interest. Almost 49% of the studies deal
with land application in the period 1971–1990, but the interest drops to
31% in the period 2018–2019. Sludge as a product has a growing in­
terest in the research community. The interest in sludge as a product was
only noted in 3% of the studies in the period 1971–1990 but grew over
the years to 22% in the period 2018–2019. Although climate change is
mentioned in the SDGs and can be seen as a main driver for societal
transitions, climate change mitigation was only relevant in 3% of the
total studies. None of the dominant practices mentioned above show any
particularly strong correlation to climate change (always below 10%
correlation).
The practices in sewage sludge management research vary not only
over time but also by country. Fig. 3 shows how the interest in the
practices varies between countries during the two latest time periods
(2009–2010 and 2018–2019), as only these periods offer a broad spatial
variation of research articles. Whereas certain countries (e.g., Australia,
Brazil, United States, and France) are mainly interested in conducting
research in land application and have a low interest in sludge as a
product, other countries are dropping the interest in land application in
favor of an interest in sludge as a product. In some of these countries, the
interest in sludge as a product is already larger than the interest in land
application (e.g., China, Germany, and Poland). For all periods, disposal
plays only a minor role in all countries (<8%). Energy recovery is more
consistent (11–19% of the studies in most countries). Only Canada,
India, and Germany show an even higher interest in energy recovery
(21%, 21%, and 32%, respectively).
Sewage sludge characteristics and socio-economic factors have a
strong influence on the strategies in sewage sludge management. For
example, some scholars have highlighted the influence of economic
M. Bagheri et al.
Fig. 3. Comparison between the practices “land application,” “sludge as a product,” “energy recovery,” and “disposal” in the countries with the highest numbers of
total articles. The data are based on articles from the two periods 2009–2010 and 2018–2019 as these periods offered the broadest data variation by country and
“sludge as a product” had already gained significance.
development on the implementation of advanced technologies (Gao
et al., 2020; Raheem et al., 2018) and of population density (land
availability) on land application or incineration (LeBlanc et al., 2008).
Moreover, legislation and interpretations of involved actors in sewage
sludge management have been mentioned (Ekman Burgman, 2022;
Kelessidis and Stasinakis, 2012; Oberg and Mason-Renton, 2018).
Although the geographical differences of practices in sewage sludge
management are to some extent tracked in this study, the sources of the
differences might be hard to identify. As the study is based on scientific
literature (peer-reviewed articles written in English, which include the
relevant keywords), the results are limited to countries with scientific
output. Future studies should focus on specific regions in order to pro­
vide knowledge about effects of local conditions on sewage sludge
management. In the following subsections, each of the four practices
will be described in more detail, including correlating categories, which
are often mentioned in combination with each practice.
3.1.1. Decreasing interest in disposal
In the first period (1971–1990), 14% of the total studies looked at
landfilling or disposing of sewage sludge. In later periods, as shown in
Fig. 2, the percentage of studies that looked at landfilling or disposing of
sewage sludge had decreased, with no studies in the last period
(2018–2019). This decline can partly be explained by the introduction of
the European Sewage Sludge Directive in 1986 (86/278/EEC) (Council
of the European Communities, 1986), which promotes the land appli­
cation of sewage sludge as a recovery strategy. In the United States, the
US EPA Part 503 Biosolids Rule (USEPA, 1994) fulfilled a similar pur­
pose by promoting land application of sewage sludge and regulating its
disposal. Finally, the European Landfill Directive from 1999 (99/31/EC)
(Council of the European Union, 1999) limits the landfilling of organic
wastes like sewage sludge. This is supported by the evaluated data where
30% of the studies with an interest in disposal were concerned with
“legislation”, which is higher than for studies of other management
practices. More details on this are summarized in Table A2.
Legislative changes should not be considered the only reason that
researchers have lessened the focus on landfill and other disposal stra­
tegies. There is a relation between policy and science which is not one-
5
Journal of Environmental Management 325 (2023) 116412
directional, but mutually constitutive where science and policy evolve in
parallel (Sundqvist et al., 2018) and thereby shape new understandings
of what is sustainable. While studies on ocean dumping could promote
disposal as a viable technology in one time (M.Leschine, 1988), this can
be fiercely debated and expose diverging worldviews underlying sci­
entific debates in other times (Mason-Renton et al., 2019). Studies on
disposal are thus related to balancing management costs with potential
pollution, indicated by the strong to “economic considerations” (30%)
and “heavy metals” (24%), see Table A2 for more details. A discursive
shift away from the emphasis of cost reduction would therefore reduce
the interest in landfill and ocean dumping.
The decrease of studies concerned with disposal, however, does not
necessarily reflect managerial practices. In reality, disposal by land­
filling is involved in sewage sludge management in several countries
(28% in the USA in 2021, 14% landfill in China in 2013, and 7% in EU,
2016–2018) (Eurostat, 2021; Gao et al., 2020; U.S. Wastewater Treat­
ment Factsheet, 2021; Yang et al., 2015) either as the main disposal
(100% in Malta) or supplementary for other processes such as inciner­
ation (12% in the Netherlands) (Eurostat, 2021). Despite the importance
of disposal either as the main management practice or as the destination
of separated pollutants of extraction processes, this has evidently been
phased out over time in sewage sludge management research.
3.1.2. The dominance of land application
Land application gathers most interest by the research community in
every period. However, the interest in land application is slightly
decreasing, from 49% of the total studies in first period (1971–1990) to
31% in last period (2018–2019). It should also be noted that the interest
varies highly between countries (Fig. 3). To find the reason behind such
a trend, data were evaluated by tracking the correlation between the
category “land application” with other categories (Table A2). Interest in
land application was found to correlate with interest in “legislation” and
“heavy metals.” In 1971–1990 and 2000–2001, 6% and 20% of studies,
respectively, were interested in “legislation” and “land application.” In
1971–1990 and in 2000–2001, 38% and 43% of studies, respectively,
were interested in “heavy metals” and “land application.”
During the time when several regions in the world promoted land
M. Bagheri et al.
application of sewage sludge by legislation (the 1980s and 1990s),
research on land application of sewage sludge received the highest in­
terest (49% of the total studies between 1971 and 1990). In the
following period (2000–2001), the interest in land application dropped
to 37%. It should be noted that relevant legislations such as the Euro­
pean Sewage Sludge Directive in 1986 (86/278/EEC) (Council of the
European Communities, 1986) and the US EPA Part 503 Biosolids Rule
(USEPA, 1994) included regulations about contaminants. Therefore, the
legislations can both stimulate the research on land application as a
management practice and increase the awareness about risks of
contaminants.
Almost 43% of land application studies have no contaminant-related
concerns, and about 58% of these studies do not mention other non-
contaminant challenges of sewage sludge management. That is, 25%
of land application studies focus purely on the beneficial aspects of land
application. In contrast, 57% of land application studies raise concerns
about contaminants. Land application also has a close connection to
contaminants. All the contaminant categories listed in Fig. 1 have their
strongest correlation to land application, and among them the highest
emphasis is on “heavy metals.” Another indication is the relatively high
number of review and risk assessment studies covering land application
and contaminant categories.
The interest in contaminants in sewage sludge broadened over the
periods studied. Whereas research in the first period (1971–1990)
mainly focused on “heavy metals” (26%) and to a lesser extent on
“organic contaminants” (6%) and “pathogens” (4%), research in later
periods mainly focused on other contaminant groups such as “pharma­
ceuticals,” “microplastics,” and “flame retardants” (Fig. 4).
Although land application of sewage sludge is the dominant practice
in the EU and USA in general, academic studies have still raised ques­
tions about the uncertainties of land application and validity of limit
values on contaminants as a safety measure (Bauer et al., 2020). The
effect of contaminants due to land application and different tolerance
levels due to risk acceptance can be identified in the ban on land
application of sewage sludge in some countries; e.g., the Netherlands
and Germany (for wastewater treatment plants with treatment capac­
ities >50,000 population equivalents) (Fijalkowski et al., 2017; Schnell
et al., 2020). The rise of emerging contaminants and the constant
concern regarding heavy metals trigger a decreasing interest in land
application. This trend is concurrent in academic interest in increasing
resource extraction to address resource recovery and pollution preven­
tion in sewage sludge management.
3.1.3. The trend of sludge as a product
Sludge as a product started with an interest in specific resources that
can be extracted from sewage sludge and used in products. Sludge-based
carbonaceous materials, lightweight aggregates, adsorbents, catalysts,
Fig. 4. Diversification of interest in contaminants. Share of total studies in
specific periods (number of studies in each period is shown in Table 1).
*Antibiotic resistant material.
6
Journal of Environmental Management 325 (2023) 116412
and nutrients in fertilizers and fodder are some of the mentioned po­
tential products that can be made from or with the help of sewage
sludge. This interest was found in 3% of the studies in the first period
(1971–1990) and grew to 22% in the last period (2018–2019) (see
sludge as a product in Fig. 2). As sludge as a product is a compound of
the evaluation categories “fertilizer production,” “nitrogen,” “phos­
phorus,” “phosphorus plant availability,” and “sludge-based material,” a
more detailed evaluation is possible. In the first two periods (1971–1990
and 2000–2001), the interest was mainly in “nitrogen” and “sludge-
based material.” In the two later periods (2009–2010 and 2018–2019),
the interest in “nitrogen” decreased and the interest in “phosphorus”
increased somewhat and the interest in “sludge-based material”
increased even further (Fig. 5). The rising interest in “phosphorus” in the
two later periods can be explained by the sharp rise in phosphorus pri­
ces, its addition to the EU critical raw material list, and stimulation of
recovering fertilizers from sewage sludge in the EU fertilizer directive
(Boer et al., 2019; Cordell and White, 2011; Desmidt et al., 2015).
Data evaluation reported in Table A2 reveals that the correlation of
categories shows that the early interest in “nitrogen” was connected to
land application of sewage sludge (61% of all studies with interest in
“nitrogen” also had an interest in land application). In contrast, the in­
terest in “phosphorus,” which mainly arose in the two later periods,
shows a correlation of only 8% to land application. Sludge as a product
(including all subcategories) also shows a declining connection to land
application in the given studies (i.e., 20%, 48%, 34%, and 6% of studies
with interest in sludge as a product also have an interest in land appli­
cation for the four respective periods). Therefore, the resource recovery
from sewage sludge goes from using sludge in land applications to
extracting specific resources for the use in products. Similarly, the
connection between the sludge as a product category and “heavy
metals,” as the contaminant with the highest interest in land application,
decreased (40%, 32%, 31%, and 22% of studies with interest in sludge as
a product also have an interest in “heavy metals” for the four respective
periods). This trend could indicate a transition from research on using all
resources in sludge in land application to research on products con­
taining specific extracted resources.
This trend is supported by analysis of the titles of articles related to
nutrients (“nitrogen,” “phosphorus,” “fertilizer production,” and
“phosphorus plant availability”). The analysis shows that the connection
of nutrients and land application decreased from 47% to 29% of the
studies over the whole study period, whereas extraction and recovery of
nutrients played no role in the first two periods but played a role in 20%
and 31% in the last two periods, respectively (Table A3). A wide variety
of technologies and methods, such as incineration, wet air oxidation,
microwave pyrolysis, acid leaching, and biological aerated filters, is
mentioned either to transfer sludge to a product or to improve the
characteristics of sludge-based products. 24% of research concerning
Fig. 5. Growth of interest in sludge as a product. Share of total studies in
specific periods (number of studies in each period in Table 1). *Phosphorus plan
availability.
M. Bagheri et al.
Fig. 6. Share of study types in the evaluated research articles over periods.
Explanation of the categories in Fig. 1. Undefined articles did not fit into the
other five categories of study types.
sludge as a product focused on ash-based products and 14% on struvite
extraction.
Various resources with the potential of recovery and reuse have been
identified in sewage sludge such as nutrients, proteins, polymers, and
construction materials (Stamatelatou and Tsagarakis, 2015). One of the
weaknesses of deriving products from sludge is the focus on single re­
sources while the fate of other possible resources is unclear. Therefore,
sludge used as a product can overlook the sustainability aspects of using
the whole resource potential of sewage sludge (Ekman Burgman and
Wallsten, 2021). On the other hand, the practice also raises contradic­
tions when different actors are involved in sewage sludge man­
agement–i.e., there can be different interpretations of which resource is
important (Ekman Burgman, 2022). Another weakness is that the
implementation of advanced extraction technology requires
cost-intensive processes as sewage sludge management demands inno­
vative and cost-efficient technology and adding new technology to
sewage sludge treatment requires clear economic benefits (Raheem
et al., 2018). In addition, the lack of a market for sludge-based products
adds more uncertainty with respect to its economic viability (Oladejo
et al., 2019; Samolada and Zabaniotou, 2014). However, economic
considerations have diminished as an explicit motivation for research as
less than 3% of the studies that focused on sludge as a product
mentioned “economic considerations” while it remains an undeniable
issue of sewage sludge management. Finally, the given studies fail to
consider the fate of extraction residues of sewage sludge management,
and studies from the most recent period do not mention disposal.
3.1.4. Constant interest in energy recovery
Although energy recovery from sewage sludge received a constant
interest over the analyzed periods, energy recovery differs from the
three other management practices. Energy recovery is mentioned in
10–18% of the studies (Fig. 2). Energy recovery was mentioned sparsely
in combination with the three other management practices–i.e., <8% of
each of the three other practices are mentioned in combination with
energy recovery in all the studied periods. None of the contaminants
seem to be highly connected to energy recovery, and the highest
connection was made in only 8% of the studies on energy recovery that
included organic contaminants. Instead, studies on energy recovery in
sewage sludge management looked at the “reduction of organic matter”
(33%), “co-treatment” (13%), mostly studies between 1971 and 1990,
and “increasing sludge volumes” (8%), mostly studies between 1971 and
1990 and between 2018 and 2019. The correlation data of energy re­
covery in combination with the respective category in all studied periods
is shown in Table A2.
The correlations between energy recovery and other categories do
not give a clear picture of trends in energy recovery. An analysis of the
titles of articles marked with energy recovery shows that about 50% of
7
Journal of Environmental Management 325 (2023) 116412
the articles aim to recover energy using anaerobic digestion, whereas
thermal treatments are used in about 20% of the articles (Table A3). No
correlation was found between energy recovery and disposal, while
anaerobic digestion can degrade about 50% of the sewage sludge’s
organic matter. However, it is unclear how the sewage sludge will ul­
timately be disposed after anaerobic digestion. Therefore, although
energy recovery can be a common practice in sewage sludge manage­
ment, the digestate from anaerobic digestion must also be processed.
This limitation can also help explain why research on energy recovery
often ignores contaminants–i.e., the main focus is on the use of the en­
ergy content and the reduction of sewage sludge rather than the entire
sewage sludge management process. Similarly, the fate of thermal
treatment residue of sewage sludge remains unclear in studies on energy
recovery.
3.2. Potential issues with the focus of research
Fig. 6 shows the share of study types in the evaluated studies: 67% of
research on sewage sludge management has applied detailed methods
that, according to this study’s definition, focus on a single or group of
contaminants or technology in a single scale (mostly lab scale) with one
or few methods. Although research is often conducted on a small scale
and needs a detailed level, the share is remarkable as the keyword search
included the term “management” to focus on studies with a more holistic
approach, including various challenges of sewage sludge management
that are inseparable. Whereas disposal has only 35% of the detail level
studies, land application and sludge as a product have detail level
studies of 67% and 74%, respectively. Also, 74% of detailed studies on
energy recovery focus on technology improvement and waste charac­
teristics. These results indicate fragmented thinking within sewage
sludge management research.
The evaluation of studies and the shifting correlations of the prac­
tices indicate fragmented themes in sewage sludge management
research with an increasing separation of the themes. This can, for
example, be seen in later periods, when the interest in resources is more
separated from land application, which clearly differentiates products
from the land applications (see 3.1.3). The importance of economic
considerations and disposal of residues has diminished, and concerns
regarding contaminants have been narrowed to a few groups as these
aspects are undeniable in the reality of sewage sludge management. The
different foci of certain countries with regard to management practices
indicate geographical fragmentation of research topics (Fig. 3). There­
fore, the geographical fragmentation and the use of detailed studies can
narrow sewage sludge management research. Detailed studies reduce
concerns, which are studied simultaneously, whereas the narrow
perspective generated by the reduction of concerns demands more
detailed studies.
4. Conclusion
By tracking concerns and motivations of different management
practices investigated in academic studies over 50 years, this study has
identified four main practices in sewage sludge management: (i)
disposal that seeks to overcome economic and legislative challenges of
landfilling, (ii) land application that considers sewage sludge as one
compound resource with land application as the main recycling strategy,
(iii) sewage sludge as a product that has extractable resources that can
be separated from the contaminants, and (iv) energy recovery from
sewage sludge, mainly by anaerobic digestion. The importance of
sewage sludge disposal and economic considerations has declined in
research, although the need for disposal and economic feasibility of any
practices in sewage sludge management is still present. Although land
application of sewage sludge has the highest share in research, this in­
terest has been declining, a trend that is connected to a significant
concern regarding contaminants. However, sludge-based products
through extraction technologies have gained interest in sewage sludge
M. Bagheri et al. Journal of Environmental Management 325 (2023) 116412

management research. To some extent, the above-mentioned trends in
research are related to changes in legislation and the global economy (i.
e., the recent increase in phosphate rock price). This confirms an
interaction between research focus and external conditions in sewage
sludge management practices. The majority of researchers address their
targets with a methodology that is limited to one or a few aspects of
sewage sludge management. Therefore, they are often unable to survey
relevant concerns and aspects of the entire sewage sludge management
process. Single focus studies can waste recoverable materials through
disposal, cause environmental consequences of land application of
sewage sludge, can neglect remaining recoverable material and residual
disposal when sludge is used as a product, and can attend to energy
recovery without considering contaminants and the fate of the rest of the
sludge. Implementing advanced treatment technologies and the devel­
opment of sludge-based products require clear economic benefits,
although economic considerations have declined to zero in sewage
sludge management studies.
Moreover, the use of detailed study results at the practical level of
sewage sludge management are questionable. The thermal treatment
trend with the potential of resource extraction from sewage sludge ash
(see Introduction) has been tracked in a quarter of the studies focusing
on sludge as a product. Although this trend was introduced as the future
pathway of fulfilling various sustainability goals simultaneously, it can
be the result of a narrow perspective. This study helps researchers get a
broader view of the concerns and highlights the gaps within and be­
tween the trends towards sustainable sewage sludge management.
Credit author statement
Marzieh Bagheri: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal
analysis; Investigation; Methodology; Resources; Project administration;
Validation; Writing - original draft; Writing - review & editing. Torben
Bauer: Conceptualization; Data curation; Software, Formal analysis;
Investigation; Methodology; Resources; Validation; Writing - review &
editing. Linus Ekman Burgman: Conceptualization; Data curation;
Formal analysis; Investigation; Validation; Methodology; Writing - re­
view & editing. Elisabeth Wetterlund: Supervision; Funding acquisi­
tion; Writing - review & editing.
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.
Data availability
The whole dataset of analyzed articles with their categorizations is
available as supplementary data.
Acknowledgement
The work has been carried out under the auspices of Graduate School
in Energy Systems, financed by the Swedish Energy Agency (P46028-1).
Economic support from the Swedish Research Council Formas, within
the national research program Sustainable Spatial Planning, is also
gratefully acknowledged (dnr. 2018-00194), as is support from Bio4­
Energy, a strategic research environment appointed by the Swedish
government.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.116412.

Appendix
Table A2
Co-occurrence table showing selected categories of the evaluation and how much they co-occur with other categories (2–6 strongest co-occurring categories shown). If
the number of total articles was above 35, the data are given for each period, otherwise only as a total. The last column (avg citation) shows how often articles in the
given category were cited on average.

1971–1990 2000–2001 2009–2010 2018–2019 total avg citation (in total)

Landfill total studies 22 8 7 0 37 13

Economic consideration 32% 0% 57% 30%
Legislation 32% 25% 29% 30%
Heavy metals 23% 38% 14% 24%
Energy recovery total studies 26 18 33 78 155 27
Reduction of organic matter 38% 44% 45% 23% 33%
Co-treatment of waste 42% 6% 9% 6% 13%
Increasing population 8% 0% 3% 12% 8%
Land application 4% 6% 3% 12% 8%
Organic contaminants 15% 6% 12% 5% 8%
GHG emissions 0% 0% 12% 9% 7%
Land application total studies 77 69 101 135 382 27
Heavy metals 38% 43% 33% 32% 35%
Legislation 6% 20% 16% 8% 12%
Pathogens 8% 9% 13% 7% 9%
Sludge as a product 1% 17% 10% 4% 8%
Sludge as a product total studies 5 25 29 96 155 28
Heavy metals 40% 32% 31% 22% 26%
Land application 20% 48% 34% 6% 19%
Eutrophication 0% 4% 17% 6% 8%
Legislation 0% 12% 10% 6% 8%
Heavy metals total studies 41 53 48 80 222 30
Land application 71% 57% 69% 54% 61%
Sludge as a resource 5% 15% 19% 26% 18%
Co-treatment of waste 7% 8% 10% 15% 11%
Legislation 5% 19% 17% 5% 11%
(continued on next page)

8
M. Bagheri et al. Journal of Environmental Management 325 (2023) 116412

Table A2 (continued )
1971–1990 2000–2001 2009–2010 2018–2019 total avg citation (in total)

Pharmaceuticals total studies 32 38

Land application 34%
Care products 22%
Organic contaminants 16%
Antibiotic resistant material total studies 10 26
Land application 50%
Micro plastics 20%
Pathogens 20%
Care products total studies 16 63
Land application 56%
Pharmaceuticals 44%
Micro plastics total studies 11 29
Land application 45%
antibiotic resistant material 18%
Organic contaminants total studies 9 26 20 29 84 36
Land application 22% 4% 45% 34% 26%
Heavy metals 22% 15% 35% 10% 19%
Energy recovery 44% 4% 20% 14% 15%
Flame retardants total studies 11 12
Land application 45%
Organic contaminants 18%
Pathogens total studies 7 14 22 21 64 18
Land application 86% 43% 59% 48% 55%
Heavy metals 29% 29% 14% 33% 25%
Economic consideration 0% 21% 9% 0% 8%
Sludge as a product 0% 0% 5% 19% 8%
Sludge based material total studies 4 11 9 54 78 22
Heavy metals 25% 36% 22% 22% 24%
Increasing population 0% 18% 0% 9% 9%
Legislation 0% 9% 22% 4% 6%
Organic contaminants 0% 9% 11% 6% 6%
Co-treatment of waste total studies 25 14 15 50 104 23
Heavy metals 12% 29% 33% 24% 23%
Land application 32% 14% 40% 14% 22%
Energy recovery 44% 7% 20% 10% 19%
Fertilizer production total studies 8 51
Heavy metals 38%
Energy recovery 25%
Nitrogen total studies 28 32
Land application 61%
Heavy metals 25%
Phosphorus 18%
Phosphorus total studies 38 26
Heavy metals 24%
Nitrogen 13%
Eutrophication 13%
Energy recovery 11%
Phosphorus plant availability total studies 12 34
Land application 42%
Heavy metals 33%
Eutrophication 25%

Table A3
Title analysis table showing how often certain keywords were found in the titles of articles within a category or several categories.
a
Categories of chosen articles Number of Keywords used for title analysis Percentage of positives (partly divided in
articles time periods)

Nutrients (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Fertilizer production, 77 combust, thermal, incinerat, ash, pyrolys, total: 21%, 1971–2001: 0%, 2009&10: 20%,
Phosphorus plant availability) gasificat 2018&19: 29%
amend, compost, biosolid, agricultur total: 34%, 1971–2001: 47%, 2009&10: 35%,
2018&19: 29%
extract, struvite, recover total: 22%, 1971–2001: 0%, 2009&10: 20%,
2018&19: 31%
Sludge as a product 155 combust, thermal, incinerat, ash, pyrolys, total: 24%
gasificat
amend, compost, biosolid, agricultur total: 27%, 1971–2001: 27%, 2009&10: 31%,
2018&19: 20%
extract, struvite, recover total: 14%, 1971–2001: 0%, 2009&10: 14%,
2018&19: 19%
Energy recovery 155 combust, thermal, incinerat, ash, pyrolys, total: 26%
gasificat
anaerobic, digest, mesophil, thermophil, total: 46%
biogas, ferment
a
The keywords have been truncated to capture all the mentioning form of the words.

9
M. Bagheri et al. Journal of Environmental Management 325 (2023) 116412

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