Article: Manga, M, Evans, BE orcid.org/0000-0001-9815-3141, Camargo-Valero, MA orcid.org/0000-0003-2962-1698 et al. (1 more author) (2016) Effect of filter media thickness on the performance of sand drying beds used for faecal sludge management. Abstract 13 The effect of sand filter media thickness on the performance of faecal sludge (FS) drying beds was 14 determined in terms of dewatering time, contaminant load removal efficiency, solids generation rate, nutrient 15 content and helminth eggs

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... iability in the dried sludge. A mixture of VIP-latrine sludge and septage in the ratio 16 1:2 was dewatered using three pilot-scale sludge drying beds with sand media thicknesses of 150mm (A), 17 250mm (B) and 350mm (C). Five dewatering cycles were conducted and monitored for each drying bed. 18 Although filter A (150mm) had the shortest average dewatering time of 3.65 days followed by filters B 19 (250mm) and C (350mm) with 3.83 and 4.02 days respectively, there was no significant difference (p>0.05) 20 attributable to filter media thickness configurations. However, there was a significant difference for the 21 percolate contaminant loads in the removal and recovery efficiency of suspended solids, total solids, total 22 volatile solids, nitrogen species, total phosphorus, COD, DCOD and BOD, with the highest removal efficiency 23 for each parameter achieved by the filter C (350mm). There were also significant differences in the nutrient 24 content (NPK) and helminth eggs viability of the solids generated by the tested filters. Filtering media 25 configurations similar to filter C (350mm) have the greatest potential for optimising nutrient recovery from FS. 26