“…For this purpose, a number of technologies have been developed that use some combination of physical, chemical, biological and thermal processes. With these processes, sludge reduction takes place on the basis of one or more of the following three mechanisms: 1) increasing the rate of degradation by solubilizing sludge solids, 2) increasing the extent of degradation by making biodegradable a portion of the unbiodegradable components and 3) modifying the treatment process, such as by removing unbiodegradable components (Sandino and Whitlock, 2010).…”