Ultrasound-Assisted Community Bureau of Reference (BCR) Procedure for Heavy Metal Removal in Sewage Sludge

Sewage sludge (SS) resulting from wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) is commonly applied worldwide as a fertilizer in agriculture. This can be done following a rigorous analysis of the sewage sludge composition. Due to its toxic potential, heavy metal ion content is one of the key parameters to test when evaluating SS sample usage as fertilizer. The distribution of metals present in SS samples produced by five municipal WWTPs in Romania was studied. To obtain information regarding metal distribution in SS, a modified ultrasound-assisted extraction procedure of the Community Bureau of Reference (BCR) was employed for As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Mo, Ni, Pb, Zn, and Co quantitation. Concentrations of these metals were measured using ICP-EOS spectrometry. Method extraction accuracy was verified using CRM-483 certified reference material. Results show that extraction efficiency was lowest for the exchangeable fraction for all studied metals. The detected ion metals were found distributed in fractions (F) 2, 3 and 4, which are unavailable for plants and groundwater under natural environmental conditions. One noteworthy finding was that using ultrapure water for the leachate test resulted in low metal solubility, indicating slight metal desorption in real environmental samples. Furthermore, maize stalk bio-adsorbent was used to minimize metal ion content in WWTP leachate samples produced by the storage of SS in terms of metal ion adsorption.