Technical, economic and environmental assessment of wastewater and sludge management solutions designed to overcome common issues

In order to support decision-making in design of wastewater and sludge management within the European Union, the EU FP7 project ROUTES has performed technical development aimed at sludge minimisation, the enabling of agricultural use of sludge and sludge resource recovery. Technical, economic and environmental assessment has been performed for case studies in which model reference plants of different size and configuration have been upgraded to solve different common problems. This paper reports on the methodology used in the assessment with examples of obtained results. The methodology in particular highlights some critical points that need further attention when similar upgrading is considered in real cases