Phosphorus (P) is a limited, essential, and irreplaceable nutrient for the biological activity of all the living organisms. Sewage sludge ash (SSA) is one of the most important secondary P resources due to its high P content. The SSA has been intensively investigated to recover P by wet chemicals (acid or alkali). Even though H2SO4 was mainly used to extract P because of its low cost and accessibility, the formation of CaSO4 (gypsum) hinders its use. Heavy metals in the SSA also cause a significant problem in P recovery since fertilizer needs to meet government standards for human health. Therefore, P recovery process with selective heavy metal removal needs to be developed. In this paper some of the most advanced P recovery processes have been introduced and discussed their technical characteristics. The results showed that further research is needed to identify the chemical mechanisms of P transformation in the recovery process and to increase P recovery efficiency and the yields.

Phosphorus is an essential and irreplaceable element for all living organisms and its resource is limited. Significant amount of used phosphorus is collected in sewage treatment plant as sludge. Sludge ash after incineration contains about 10% of phosphorus in dry mass basis, which is comparable to phosphate rocks, and it is an important source of phosphorus recovery. Acid and alkali were used to leach phosphorus from sludge ash and compared for their leaching kinetics and performance. Phosphorus leaching by NaOH was fast and 0.2 N and 2 N NaOH leached 49% and 56% of the total phosphorus in the sludge ash at the L/S ratio of 100. Phosphorus leaching by sulphuric acid and hydrochloric were very fast and most of the phosphorus was leached in 5 minutes. In case of sulphuric acid 95% of the total phosphorus in the sludge ash was leached by 0.2 N at the L/S ratio of 100 and 93% was leached by 1 N at the L/S ratio of 10. 1 N hydrochloric acid leached 99% of the total phosphorus at the L/S ratio of 10. The results showed acids were more effective than alkali for phosphorus leaching from sludge ash and hydrochloric acid leached more phosphorus than sulphuric acid.

We investigated the effects of leaching concentration (0.1 ~ 1.0 M) and time (1 ~ 120 min) on the phosphorus recovery from ash and dried sewage sludge produced by titanium tetrachloride (TiCl4) flocculation by acidic (H2SO4 and HCl) or alkaline (KOH and NaOH) leaching. The extraction efficiencies of dried sludge were 2.7 ~ 12.6% for H2SO4, 2.5 ~ 10.5% for HCl, 3.6 ~ 9.6% for KOH, and 7.1 ~ 9.9% for NaOH with 1 M, and the maximum efficiency was obtained within 45 min. The maximum %P extracted of sludge ash was 83.1 for H2SO4, 80.2 for HCl, 51.2 for KOH, and 51.2 for NaOH with 1 M, obtained within 45 min. The rate constants (min−1) for the leaching of P from sludge ash were found to be 1.199 for H2SO4, 1.026 for HCl, 0.264 for KOH, and 0.622 for NaOH. The P leaching increased with the increase in leaching concentration, and the maximum leaching for ash was obtained within 0.3 M, regardless of acidic or alkaline leaching. The overall results indicate that the ash of TiCl4 flocculated sewage sludge can be treated with H2SO4 to efficiently recover P.

Incinerated sewage sludge ash (ISSA) is regarded as a valuable resource having great potential for the recycling ofphosphorus. The P content of ISSA is known as around 10% as a P. Therefore, this study was undertaken to investigatethe precipitation and separation characteristics of phosphorus from the acid-extracted solution of ISSA. The incineratedsewage sludge ash was leached by 1N sulfuric acid with solid/liquid ratio of 10 for 30min. The extracted solutioncontained about 1.1% of P and other metals, Al, Fe, Ca and Mg, with over than 1,000mg/L. Some heavy metals suchas Cu, Pb and Cr are presented as impurities as well. Most of Al and Fe in the extracted solution were precipitated withP when titrating it to pH 3.6. The precipitated form were assumed to AlPO4, FePO4·2H2O respectively, and Pb and Crwere precipitated in this stage as well. At this experiment, about 62.9% of the initial P was precipitated and removedfrom the solution. It was also find that all of the P extracted can not be recovered as a precipitate with a simple additionof NaOH, even though titrated to pH 11.6. The precipitated P also contained some impurities such as Al, Fe, and someheavy metals, which means that further researches are needed for the efficient separation and recovery of P from ISSA.

The main objective of this research was to evaluate the effects of process variables which were forming ability, flow displacement, effective stress, effective strain, fluid vector and products defects on manufactured artificial lightweight aggregate made of both incinerated sewage sludge ash and clay by means of the numerical analysis of a rigid-plastic finite element method. CATIA (3D CAD program) was used for an extrusion metal mold design that was widely used in designing aircraft, automobile and metallic molds. A metal forming analysis program (ATES Co.) had a function of a rigid-plastic finite element method was used to analyze the program. The result of extrusion forming analysis indicated clearly that a shape retention of the manufactured artificial lightweight aggregate could be maintained by increasing the extrusion ratio (increasing compressive strength inside of extrusion die) and decreasing the die angle. The stress concentration of metal mold was increased by increasing an extrusion ratio, and it was higher in a junction of punch and materials, friction parts between a bottom of the punch and inside of a container, a place of die angle and a place of die of metal mold. Therefore, a heat treatment as well as a rounding treatment for stress distribution in the higher stress concentration regions were necessary to extend a lifetime of the metallic mold. A deformity of the products could have made from several factors which were a surface crack, a lack of the shape retention and a crack of inside of the products. Specially, the surface crack in the products was the most notably affected by the extrusion ratio.