Valorization of sewage sludge ash in clay bricks

The PhD project is part of the Horizon Europe project, AshCycle, which has the major aim to develop new tools for the utilization of ashes from incineration of municipal solid waste, biomass, and sewage sludge. About 25 Mt/year of these ashes are landfilled (a large part as contaminated waste), which leads to significant losses of metals, nutrients, rare earth elements, and industrially valuable minerals present in the ashes. The AshCycle consortium, with 28 partners from 8 countries, will develop and demonstrate technologies and products with incineration residues as secondary resources in regional Industrial-Urban Symbiosis.

This specific PhD project aims at developing optimized production parameters when using sewage sludge ash in clay bricks and to produce a pilot demonstration in collaboration with the industrial partners. The potential of using the sewage sludge ash in clay bricks will be explored in relation to mix design, production parameters, and resulting mechanical and environmental properties of the bricks