Effect of separation pretreatment on environmental and economic performance of sludge resource utilization

[Display omitted] •Quantifying the environmental and economic impact of IOMS on sludge treatment.•The sludge treatment via IOMS pretreatment reduce the ECER values by 56%-76%.•Further processing IS to produce ceramsite can enhance resource utilization.•Assessing the environmental and economic impacts of provincial IOMS replication. As a new technology for accurate utilization of sludge resources, sludge inorganic–organic matter separation (IOMS) has attracted wide attention. This study examined the impact of this pretreatment on environmental and economic performance of sludge composting and incineration using life cycle assessment (LCA) and whole life costing (WLC). LCA results indicated that IOMS pretreatment reduced the energy conservation and emission reduction (ECER) values of composting and incineration by 56 % and 76 %, respectively. Meanwhile, WLC exhibited that IOMS pretreatment could cut the break-even year of incineration from 11 years to 4 years. The combination of organic sludge incineration/composting with inorganic sludge sintering ceramsite reveals excellent environmental and economic performance. The application optimization hypothesis analysis of these two routes in various provinces of China indicates that Jiangsu has the greatest development potential and should become a major promotion region.