This stuff used to go straight to the landfill. I wonder when they started using it as fertilizer?
It is usually composted and sold under the name Milorganite across the country ... it is not recomended for food crops ... it’s been sold this way for at least 20 years ,, buy it at any lawn and garden center..
You want to break down biosludge? Send it through a “Plasma arc trash reduction” device, which extracts the energy found in the organic part of the sludge as synfuel, and reduces all kinds of chemical compounds to their constituent atoms, destroying ALL pathogens, common enviornmentally dangerous chemicals and their metabolites, and concentrating most heavy metals in the slag that drains off the reaction chamber This process takes quite a bit of energy on startup, but when running, it generates MORE energy than it consumes, and the products, the syngas and the slag (mostly silica), which also contains the metals found in the biosludge, as stipples and striations in the cooled slag. Or the slag can be crushed up as aggregate and added to concrete or used for rosdbuilding.
This stuff is a hydrogen mine, and could be used to produce the huge quantities of hydrogen needed for the coming hydrogen economy.
About 10 to 15 years ago the EPA started pushing the spreading of sludge and its equally nasty cousin septage. Septage is quite literally what you get when you pump out a porta-potty.
Due to the push from the EPA most states now actually encourage farmers to go into the business of spreading sludge and septage on their fields. And they make all kinds of assumptions about its safety to do so. For example, in our state the presumption is that the septage you spread on a field 50 feet from a stream won't end up in the stream.
The whole idea is poorly thought out, and no doubt will result in a new crop of Superfund sites when a future generation figures out the full effects of spreading sludge.