When Henderson Water Utility (Henderson, KY) received notice that their local landfill would no longer accept their sludge cake, the utility faced an immediate crisis regarding disposal costs and operational viability. To offset rising costs and meet strict new disposal requirements, Henderson needed a solution to significantly dry and reduce the volume of sludge produced by their two belt presses. Conventional thermal dryers like rotary drum, paddle, and high-temperature belt dryers boil away water from sludge. However, this creates byproducts like dust, steam, heat, and odor. As a result, these systems require additional equipment, like boilers, coolers, dust separators, and more. This extra equipment imposes high capital costs and large footprint requirements, while consuming a lot of energy and downtime for maintenance. Henderson instead selected an alternative, non-thermal technology: the Electro Osmosis Sludge Dryer. Unlike thermal dryers that boil water to steam, this dryer utilizes electric fields to instantly repel water away from solids at a molecular level. This process minimizes the "phase change" energy penalties associated with conventional drying (ie. boiling water to steam), resulting in lower energy consumption and fewer byproducts such as no dust and minimal steam, heat, and odor. This presentation will detail the full-scale installation at Henderson. It will review how the utility successfully increased cake solids from 14% to 42% DS, effectively reducing sludge volume by 67%. Attendees will learn about the differences between thermal and electro-osmotic drying, through the lens of Henderson’s installation.