Municipal sludge management and disposal in South Korea: Status and a new sustainable approach

Based on figures from 2002, 5,216 ton/d of the municipal sludge is produced from 184 large municipal wastewater treatment plants in 111 cities with total treatment capacity of 19,229,745 m(3)/d. Even though the large amount of sludge disposal has depended greatly on ocean disposal and landfills until recently, the fraction of sludge reuse has gradually increased from 2.7% to 7%, since 1991. Due to a need of resources recovery from the sludge, high cost requirement of incineration and legislative regulation, recent new research is mainly focused on resources recovery and its reuse from the municipal sludge, such as high performance acid fermenter with pathogen reduction, crystallization (struvite and hydroxyapatite) using waste lime, cofermentation of municipal sludge with food waste, aerobic composting with P crystallization, vermistabilization, lime treatment, etc. Current research and practical activities with some efforts for the new technical development as well as environmental law and regulation are reviewed.