Value-Added Bio-products From Sewage Sludge
Résumé
The wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) treats wastewater and produces healthy water for water recycling and also produces a huge quantity of solid waste (sludge or biosolids). The municipal solid waste totals nearly 1.9. billion tons produced each year around the world. Disposal and transportation of solid wastes incur costs of around 50% of the total WWTP operation cost. The rich organic-nutrient-possessing sludge can be used as a raw material to produce value-added bio-products (VAPs) using green biotechnology approaches. The production of VAPs from biosolids could greatly reduce the sludge volume and yield beneficial products for industrial applications in an economic and eco-friendly way. In this chapter, the use of solid waste as raw material to produce VAPs like enzymes (laccases, degradative enzymes, and proteases), bioethanol and biodiesel, bio-fertilizer and bio-composting, bio-flocculants/biopolymers, biopesticides, and bioplastics were summarized.