Characteristics of Solidified Carbon Dioxide and Perspectives for Its Sustainable Application in Sewage Sludge...

Appropriate management is necessary to mitigate the environmental impacts of wastewater sludge. One lesser-known technology concerns the use of solidified CO₂ for dewatering, sanitization, and digestion improvement. Solidified CO₂ is a normal byproduct of natural gas treatment processes and can also be produced by dedicated biogas upgrading technologies. The way solidified CO₂ is sourced is fully in line with the principles of the circular economy and carbon dioxide mitigation. The aim of this review is to summarize the current state of knowledge on the production and application of solid CO₂ in the pretreatment and management of sewage sludge. Using solidified CO₂ for sludge conditioning causes effective lysis of microbial cells, which destroys activated sludge flocs, promotes biomass fragmentation, facilitates efficient dispersion of molecular associations, modifies cell morphology, and denatures macromolecules. Solidified CO₂ can be used as an attractive tool to sanitize and dewater sludge and as a pretreatment technology to improve methane digestion and fermentative hydrogen production. Furthermore, it can also be incorporated into a closed CO₂ cycle of biogas production-biogas upgrading-solidified CO₂ production-sludge disintegration-digestion-biogas production. This feature not only bolsters the technology's capacity to improve the performance and cost-effectiveness of digestion processes, but can also help reduce atmospheric CO₂ emissions, a crucial advantage in terms of environment protection. This new approach to solidified CO₂ generation and application largely counteracts previous limitations, which are mainly related to the low cost-effectiveness of the production process.