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The disposal of excess biological sewage sludge from wastewater treatment is a growing environmental issue due to the vast quantities generated worldwide. For many years, sludge disposal has been considered an inevitable "nuisance" linked to the main task of wastewater treatment; recently, the issues relating to the presence of emerging pollutants in sludge have contributed to severe limitations on traditional disposal routes and increased process costs. As a consequence of the water industry's approach to sustainability and circular economy principles, the investigation into options for sludge-embedded resource recovery has been increasing over time. Among these, the definition of biorefinery encompasses many processes used to process sewage sludge for biofuel and/or resource recovery. In addition to the "conventional" recovery of biogas and nutrients, biopolymers (PHAs and EPS), proteins, enzymes, biopesticides, and biofuels are among the "new" sludge extraction products that are being studied. Not all of the proposed technologies are, however, mature for industrial exploitation as yet. This paper presents an overview of possible product recovery from sludge biorefinery, with emphasis on recent developments, and on the benefits and limitations of applicable technologies for ensuring sustainability and environmental efficiency, through an analysis of the current literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Circular economy is an upward trending notion that has drawn worldwide attention of policymakers, industry administrators, environmentalist as well as academic researchers. Though there are several tools developed for monitoring the material recovery, a very few number of research have been conducted to integrate circular economy principles with end-of-life (EOL) management strategies. This paper proposes an EOL-driven circular economy framework for the management of materials flow so as to extend the lifetime of materials through improved durability as well as to provide more social, economic and environmental benefits through less material waste. A case study from the agricultural waste industry is presented in order to test the model and validate its performance. The results show that the proposed framework has a good potential for small and medium enterprises (SME) advances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disposal of excess biological sewage sludge from wastewater treatment is a growing environmental issue due to the vast quantities generated worldwide. For many years, sludge disposal has been considered an inevitable “nuisance” linked to the main task of wastewater treatment; recently, the issues relating to the presence of emerging pollutants in sludge have contributed to severe limitations on traditional disposal routes and increased process costs. As a consequence of the water industry’s approach to sustainability and circular economy principles, the investigation into options for sludge-embedded resource recovery has been increasing over time. Among these, the definition of biorefinery encompasses many processes used to process sewage sludge for biofuel and/or resource recovery. In addition to the “conventional” recovery of biogas and nutrients, biopolymers (PHAs and EPS), proteins, enzymes, biopesticides, and biofuels are among the “new” sludge extraction products that are being studied. Not all of the proposed technologies are, however, mature for industrial exploitation as yet. This paper presents an overview of possible product recovery from sludge biorefinery, with emphasis on recent developments, and on the benefits and limitations of applicable technologies for ensuring sustainability and environmental efficiency, through an analysis of the current literature.

In this paper the most recent advances in lithium iron phosphate batteries recycling are presented. After discharging operations and safe dismantling and pretreatments, the recovery of materials from the active materials is mainly performed via hydrometallurgical processes. Moreover, a significant number of works are currently being focused on direct regeneration processes. Both approaches are currently applied only at laboratory scale. The main challenges to be faced when dealing with upscaling these technologies (for example mechanic vs manual dismantling, valuable elements recovery strategy vs all-components recovery strategy) are here presented and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]