Wastewater sludge convective drying: Influence of sludge origin

This paper deals with thermal drying of wastewater sludges, whose management will become crucial in the forthcoming years. Sludges collected after mechanical dewatering in 5 different WWTPs are submitted to the same convective drying treatment in order to try finding some relations between the drying behaviours, the type of effluent and wastewater treatments. Results show clearly sludge drying remains a particularly complex operation because sludges may exhibit very different behaviours, both from kinetic and texture points of view. Initial moisture content and global composition are not sufficient to explain the different observed behaviours. It is too early to claim one or another type of water treatment has an influence on the drying behaviour. However, the drying rates can be classified in the inverse order of the organic content. Moreover for sludges at the same siccities, the harder the material (rheological properties), the higher the drying rate. Final textural properties can be related to the rheological properties and the internal diffusion limitations lowering the drying intensity.