Current state and the application of energy conversion of sewage sludge treatment in Malaysia

Abstract

Following the rapid growth of Malaysia's population, the sewage sludge disposal capacity makes a big movement up to 7 million m3 annually. It proves that the conventional method, landfilling, causes negative issues related to the secondary pollution as well as high electricity consumption of sewage sludge treatment unit at 544,900 GWh in 2016-2019. The energy consumption also plays important role in the high fossil fuel-dependent energy production in Malaysia. The integration of energy conversion with sludge treatment is the potential method solving problems and global warming prevention. Thanks to the relative high heating value of sludge, the integration of energy conversion with sewage sludge treatment was suitable to reach two purpose including total waste destruction and energy generation through heat recovery, that results in the operating cost reduction and decrease of carbon footprint. The paper provided the overview of sewage sludge disposal and treatment status in Malaysia, it came with the potential of sludge treatment such as anaerobic digestion, combustion, gasification into useful energy was presented.