Analytical and legislative challenges of sewage sludge processing and management

This article presents the most popular methods of sewage sludge management and analytical techniques which could be a powerful tool in designing new sewage sludge management methods. Chemical analysis is also described as a vital point at the subsequent stages of technological processes control and sewage sludge quality assessment. It is also an instrument essential to maintaining control of processed sewage sludge introduced to the environment as ready-to-use materials. The sludge management method is conditioned by the compliance with legal acts concerning sludge management. The most important of these contain information regarding allowable concentrations of pollutants which can be released into the environment, and the most important declarations concerning sewage sludge management. Various analytical techniques and preparation methods that can be used during the monitoring of the managed and processed sewage sludge are described. The most important are chromatographic techniques, methods based on inductively coupled plasma, and mass spectrometry based methods. Graphical abstract