Sewage-Water Treatment and Sewage-Sludge Management with Power Production as Bioenergy with Carbon Capture System: A Review

Abstract

Sewage-water treatment comprehends primary, secondary, and tertiary steps to produce reusable water after removing sewage contaminants. However, a sewage-water treatment plant is typically a power and energy consumer and produces high volumes of sewage sludge mainly generated in the primary and secondary steps. The use of more efficient anaerobic digestion of sewage water with sewage sludge can produce reasonable flowrates of biogas, which is shown to be a consolidated strategy towards the energy self-sufficiency and economic feasibility of sewage-water treatment plants. Anaerobic digestion can also reduce the carbon footprint of energy sources since the biogas produced can replace fossil fuels for electricity generation. In summary, since the socio-economic importance of sewage treatment is high, this review examined works that contemplate: (i) improvements of sewage-water treatment plant bioenergy production and economic performances; (ii) the exploitation of technology alternatives for the energy self-sufficiency of sewage-water treatment plants; (iii) the implementation of new techniques for sewage-sludge management aiming at bioenergy production; and (iv) the implementation of sewage-water treatment with bioenergy production and carbon capture and storage.