Solids handling in the wastewater treatment industry is an ever-evolving skill that has been increasingly important as we deal with new pressures on hauling costs, limitations on historical outlets, drivers for improved energy recovery, and emerging regulatory pressures (including more and more recent focus on PFAS) at both the local and national levels. The end result is that solids treatment practitioners within our industry are being asked to do more with less and are placed in a position to truly make a fundamental shift in how we handle solids at our WRRFs. Looking to the hands-on impacts of these changes, the industry is being asked to reduce the total mass of the biosolids products. This requires additional handling within the WRRF, that is not the same as what WRRF staffs have historically been accustomed to. A primary challenge facing WRRFs in the implementation of advanced solids treatment is how to best incorporate these processes into their existing plant and also ensure that the solids feed to these processes meet the often-specific requirements of these treatment approaches. This presentation will focus on the elements of solids handling “outside the box” of these processes that are applicable to a wide range of advanced solids technologies including thermal hydrolysis, thermal drying, pyrolysis, gasification and supercritical water oxidation. The primary elements and impacts that will be discussed are: 1.Solids Screens – how does the removal of stringy or fibrous materials either benefit or negatively impact dewatering, drying or processes with reduced flow path areas. 2.Low Pressure Cake Conveyance – how can WRRFs best balance containment, agitation, energy consumption, cake consistency and downstream process integration while ensuring a consistent and reliable solids feed to advanced solids treatment processes. 3.High(er) Pressure Cake Pumping – how can higher pressure feed requirements be safely and reliably implemented through intentional design incorporating online monitoring and passive safety features, operational controls, and standard operating procedures that ensure long term performance. 4.High Temperature Elements – how can WRRFs maintain safe and reliable operation with systems that require skills sets that are vastly different than those traditionally required in the wastewater industry while achieving energy efficiency and operational high performance. 5.Final Product Management – how can realistic reliability be achieved while transporting and handling solids with increasingly abrasive properties while also ensuring safe atmospheres, high levels of pipe integrity and consistency in transport to final beneficial use destinations. As the wastewater recovery industry and the solids handling subset of that industry continue to move together into the future, a detailed understanding of how to best “manage the interfaces” to bring the whole facility together is critical. This requires careful consideration during the design and implementation phases to ensure that operations and maintenance staff are educated on these new elements and are equipped with the tools needed to effectively use these new facilities to achieve new goals.