Thermal decomposition study of sewage sludge and of organicwaste used in the sorption of metals

The conventional treatments of effluents containing heavy metals produce significant quantities of byproducts with recalcitrant characteristics, making necessary looking after alternative techniques in order to avoid the production of new contaminated residues. Sorption process of chromium and zinc in vertical columns loaded with sewage sludge and organic solid waste has been studied in this work. The data from the TG curves of the two sorbents presented significant differences when they were submitted to the metal uptake, being noticed the displacement of the thermal events towards lower temperatures for both types of sorbents studied. As it was expected, for both sorbents, an increase in the mass of samples has been observed at the completion of the thermal tests upon metal uptake. Therefore, these facts demonstrate that during the biosorption process a physico-chemical interaction took place between sorbents and metals, as it was evidenced by the more than 100 K increase in the decomposition temperatures as well as the variation of the ΔH values of the samples.