ERM-CC144 - Sewage Sludge

The Certified Reference Material ERM-CC144 has been specifically developed to help laboratories that analyse sewage sludge, or similar matrices, in relation to  environmental protection.  The intended use of the Certified Reference Material ERM-CC144 is mainly for verification of  the accuracy in determinations of trace element in sewage sludge or other similar matrices.  Sewage sludge is defined as a 'residual sludge from sewage plants treating domestic and  urban waste waters and from other sewage plants treating waste waters of a composition  similar to domestic and urban waste waters.

The base material for the preparation of ERM-CC144 consisted of a mixture of two types of  sewage sludge. The first one was collected by the Joint Research Centre - Environment  Institute, in Ispra (IT) and then dried at the Joint Research Centre Directorate F - Health,  Consumers and Reference Materials Geel, BE. The second type was collected by the  University of Amsterdam and dried at WEPAL, Wageningen (NL). The mixture was made of  ca. 40 % of the first sewage sludge and ca. 60 % of WEPAL sludge. At the JRC-Geel the two  materials were mixed together and ten sub-batches of ca. 10 kg each were separately  homogenised in a Turbula mixer for 30 minutes.

keywords: environmental material , biosolids , trace elements , heavy metals , fractionation analysis , aqua regia soluble fraction