The remarkable development of sanitation in Morocco has inevitably led to the production of sludge generated from wastewater treatment plants in increasing quantities. Consequently, the problem of sludge management becomes persistent and worrying.
The aim of this paper was to contribute to the study of sewage sludge management issue in Morocco by identifying the various constraints hampering the sustainable disposal and/or recovery of municipal sewage sludge and drawing up rec-ommendations for the decision-makers. Moreover, in the context of improving by learning from best practices and seeking common solutions regarding this problematic, benchmarking with other countries has been conducted as well.
To carry out this study, a methodological approach was defined based on bibliographic research, surveys, interviews and benchmarking.
The constraints hampering the sustainable management of sludge are numerous and complex, they have not been tech-nical and environmental but also a regulatory, institutional-organizational and economic-financial nature yet. Therefore, municipalities, government and academia ideally would be encouraged to participate in the decision-making process re-garding the management of sewage sludge. Technical solutions, when coupled with stakeholder participation, can lead to policy implementation with a higher chance of improving the present situation.
In the case of Morocco, when comparing with others sludge recovery and disposal routes, land application (reuse in ag-riculture, silviculture and rehabilitation of degraded soils) remains the most environmentally friendly option, as well as a sustainable and economically viable solution.
Throughout the world, considerable quantities of water treatment sludge (WTS) and sewage sludge (SS) are produced as waste. This study assessed in the laboratory, the possibility to use both waste products when they are incorporated as filler at 1% with relation to the total mass of a hot mix asphalt - HMA. To this end, both waste products were initially reduced to ash through a calcination process. Resistance tests under monotonic load (Marshall and indirect tension tests), and cyclic load (resilient modulus test) were applied on mixes that contained WTS and SS. Besides, moisture damage (modified Lotmman test), and abrasion (Cantabro) resistance were assessed. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) test was performed in order to verify if the results are statically equal or not to those of the control HMA. As a general conclusion, it is reported that both materials show a resistance increase under monotonic load and higher stiffness under cyclic load (cohesion) when they are incorporated into the mix as filler despite the fact that the asphalt content used was less than the control mix. However, some problems are observed associated with moisture damage resistance, and friction wear (adherence).