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Aïda Ben Hassen Trabelsi [1] and Amina Ghrib [1; 2] and Kaouther Zaafouri [3] and Athar Friaa [1] and Aymen Ouerghi [1; 3] and Slim Naoui [1] and Habib Belayouni [2]

Academic Editor: Juan-Rodrigo Bastidas-Oyanedel

1, Laboratory of Wind Energy Control and Waste Energy Recovery (LMEEVED), Research and Technology Centre of Energy (CRTEn), Borj-Cedria Technopark, BP 95, 2050 Hammam-Lif, Tunisia, crten.rnrt.tn

2, Department of Geology, Faculty of Sciences of Tunis, University of Tunis El Manar, Tunis, Tunisia, utm.rnu.tn

3, Laboratory of Microbial Ecology and Technology (LETMi), The National Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology (INSAT), Carthage University, 2 Boulevard de la Terre, BP 676, 1080 Tunis, Tunisia, ucar.rnu.tn

Received May 8, 2017; Revised Jun 21, 2017; Accepted Jun 28, 2017

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

1. Introduction

In Tunisia, since 1974, date of implementation of the first wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), urban wastewater treatment operations generate increasingly large quantities of sewage sludge (SS). According to the National Office for Sanitation “ONAS,” the generation of humid SS reached about 2 million tons/year in 2009 and it was estimated at 2.5 million tons/year in 2016. Despite the large quantities of produced SS, no specific handling procedure has been adopted until now in Tunisia. Actually, the greater part of generated SS (around 76%) has always been stockpiled on WWTP (35%) and on ONAS sites (41%) and only 24% was landfilled in municipal discharges to limit it negative influence on environment. In view of the current situation of SS treatment in Tunisia and with the increasing awareness regarding harmful characters of these wastes for environment and human health, valuable methods of SS management are expected urgently. Regarding the chemical composition of urban SS, which consists of heterogeneous mixture of nontoxic organic matter and inorganic compounds [1], the energetic valorization of these residues constitutes an alternative way to convert such carbonaceous materials into higher value-added products (biofuels, heat, and electricity). In this regard, to recover energy from SS, various treatment options (anaerobic digestion, incineration with energy recovery; gasification and pyrolysis, supercritical oxidation; thermal hydrolysis, etc.) have been advanced by [2, 3]. In Tunisia, the...
 
 
 
   
 

 

 

 

 

 

        

        
 

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