Rapid sustainability assessment of sludge management technologies for industrial scale-up

Sludge reduction technologies have advanced significantly because of their potential in effective waste management. However, the need for scalable and sustainable wastewater treatment technologies is critical in addressing the challenges posed by population growth and environmental concerns. These technologies still lack a comprehensive framework that can evaluate the relationships between techno-economic, environmental life cycle, socio-policy, and reliability as well as sensitivity, and uncertainty analysis. Furthermore, the reliance on expert judgment, in evaluating new technologies, while valuable, often is slow, costly, and sometimes hindered by a lack of familiarity with disruptive innovations due to experts' knowledge gaps and constrained future outlooks. Hence, this study introduces an integrated rapid sustainability assessment framework designed to evaluate pilot sludge reduction technologies across technical, economic, reliability, environmental, and socio-political dimensions. The framework leverages a data-driven, scenario-based multi-criteria decision-making approach, incorporating rigorous sensitivity and uncertainty analyses to enhance the reliability of evaluations. This framework is validated through a case study involving three alternatives: (1) Anoxic/Oxic Membrane bioreactor, (2) Anaerobic Side-Stream Reactor, and (3) Anaerobic Main-Stream Reactor. Using the proposed approach, 145,530 potential future scenarios were analysed, incorporating five key criteria and 20 vital indices. The results indicate that the second alternative outperforms the other options in 86 % of the evaluated scenarios. However, its performance may be sensitive to any changes in pollutant removal efficiency, operational costs, and global warming potential when scaled to full industrial applications. In comparison to current approaches, this user-friendly framework not only shows its ability to capture a broader range of uncertainties, but also identifies trends and potential challenges that may not be readily apparent through expert intuition alone. This method also provides a holistic view of the environmental, technical, reliability and socio-policy impacts, facilitating informed decision-making for scaling pilot technologies to industrial applications.