Review on fundamental aspect of application of drying process to wastewater sludge

The objective of this work is to give the fundamental information that should be known about wastewater sludge drying. Three methods are mainly applied: convective drying, conductive drying and solar drying, each one presenting different characteristics. When applying convective drying three phases are distinguished: adaptation phase, constant drying rate phase and falling drying rate phase. Experimental works show that several parameters influence the drying kinetic during this process, such as the origin of the sludge and operating conditions. Imaging techniques allow observing three phenomena that happen during convective drying: shrinkage, cracks and skin formation. When applying conductive drying and considering the torque variations, the product passes through: pasty phase, lumpy phase and granular phase. The results show no regular shape of the drying kinetic with high values of the drying rate and the heat transfer coefficient during the first phase. A special focus is given into the sticky phase which reduces performances of the dryer. The third applied drying method is solar drying, which depends wholly on climatic conditions, such solar radiations and air temperature. Besides, for this method no regular shape of the drying kinetic can be observed, with high drying rate values during favorable conditions and low drying rate values during unfavorable conditions. The presented studies dealing with solar drying of wastewater sludge are limited to the variations of the different air temperatures registered inside and outside the drying chamber with the product temperature and their humidity with study of the pathogen reduction. Finally, some innovative developed methods are exposed in this review, such as the use of frying and super-heated steam.