Sewage sludge presents a dual rheological behaviour with an abrupt change between the two regimes. Using a new technique of reconstruction of the velocity profile, the behaviour can be modelled by a unique equation including liquid and solid components but also a structural parameter. It is also rigorously demonstrated that the only one rheological behaviour in steady state in the liquid regime is a truncated power-law which can be defined only for a shear rate and a shear stress higher than a critical value, γ̇c and τc. Moreover, the critical shear rate and shear stress increase with the solid content and depend on the fractal dimension of flocs which implies that thixotropic effects are all the more important as the sludge is thick and fresh.

Sludge produced by municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) amounts to only a few percent by volume of the processed wastewater, but its handling accounts for up to 50% of total operating costs. Moreover, the need to achieve a sustainable sludge management strategy has become of great concern. It follows that as conventional and more traditional options, such as land spreading for agricultural purposes, are progressively restricted, and often legally banned, the development of innovative systems to maximize the recovery of useful materials and/or energy is required. A change toward more sustainable procedures can be promoted through an integrated approach, including the assessment of management routes capable of maximizing the recycle/recovery benefits, through low energy impact systems, and the development of operational systems appropriate to local circumstances. Based on the above considerations, an integrated system is proposed in this paper. It includes Anaerobic digestion, Dewatering/Drying, and Pyrolysis/Gasification processes which are efficiently coupled for the recovery of products for material reuse and/or energy purposes. Such an integrated system should also allow the recovery of one or more materials, depending on the combination of processes which best fit specific local situations

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We examine the validity of the slump test for predicting the yield stress of polymeric suspensions and mineral suspensions. First we propose a modification of this test: in order to make measurements on fluids with high yield stress (of the order of several hundreds of Pascal) we add a mass at the sample top. From detailed observations of the slump in time we show that, for polymeric suspensions (hair gel and sewage sludges), two critical stresses can be distinguished which almost exactly correspond to the two critical stresses (respectively corresponding to a regime change and to the asymptotic slump) observed in rheometry during creep tests. Thus the slump test appears as a practiceful and relevant means to determine the intrinsic properties of these fluids. For mineral suspensions it is shown that the flow abruptly stops after a short time, a behaviour in agreement with the results of rheometrical tests carried out by progressively decreasing the applied stress. In that case the slump also appears to significantly depend on the procedure and cannot be related to a single property of the material.

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