Faecal sludge characterisation dataset and analysis code, Parakou faecal sludge treatment plant, Benin (n=14)

This deposit contains the complete dataset and analysis code underlying a physicochemical characterisation of faecal sludge (boues de vidange, BV) at the faecal sludge treatment plant (STEP) of Parakou, Benin. It supports a manuscript under review at Cleaner Waste Systems (Elsevier). The dataset comprises 14 faecal sludge samples (BV 1_1 to BV 9), collected over two sampling weeks, each characterised by 22 physicochemical parameters spanning sample identification, general physicochemistry (pH, electrical conductivity, temperature, redox potential, total dissolved solids, salinity, dissolved oxygen and saturation), organic load (suspended solids, COD, BOD5 and the COD/BOD5 ratio), nitrogen and phosphorus speciation (nitrate, ammonium, nitrite, orthophosphate), total nutrients (total nitrogen and total phosphorus), and heavy metals (lead and zinc, determined by flame atomic absorption spectrometry, FAAS; Varian SpectrAA 210; AFNOR FD T 90-112; expressed on a dry-matter basis). Cadmium and mercury were not part of the trace-metal suite for this campaign. The values retained correspond to the primary laboratory bench records. During assembly from two complementary source files collected at the same plant, a documented cross-validation was applied and no observation was excluded: two total dissolved solids entries were converted from g/L to mg/L after conductivity cross-checking; two total nitrogen entries were set to the sum of the measured inorganic fractions as a conservative lower bound where the recorded value was physically inconsistent; and lead and zinc were taken from the validated source after a row-shifted corrupted duplicate had been set aside. Borderline values retained without modification are documented. Missing values are coded as NA (maximum missingness: ammonium, 3 of 14 entries). A Phase 1 operational dumping log of 29 real field events, transcribed from the site dumping sheets, is included as phase1_dumping_log.csv and is read directly by the analysis pipeline. This version (v3) adds a reduced 5-variable PCA robustness check (pH, COD, TN, Pb, Zn) supporting Supplementary S3 of the manuscript, together with its generated outputs (Figure_S3_reduced_PCA.png and three table_S3_PCA5_*.csv files). Files included:- BV_Parakou_n14.csv: the analysis-ready dataset (14 rows by 23 columns, UTF-8, header on line 1).- phase1_dumping_log.csv: Phase 1 operational dumping log (29 real events: date, operator, operator class, vehicle type, volume, declared origin, consistency).- BV_DATA_n14_complete.xlsx: the complete working file (descriptive statistics, data-decision log, and ready-to-adapt Materials and Methods text).- Parakou_Analysis_Complete.R: a self-contained R pipeline reproducing all figures and result tables from the CSV files (descriptive statistics, pollution indices, stoichiometry, Spearman correlations with bootstrap confidence intervals, PCA and hierarchical clustering, a reduced 5-variable PCA robustness check, ecological risk indices, and non-parametric tests). The Phase 1 operator-by-consistency association is computed on the real log (chi-square = 7.25, df = 3, Monte Carlo p = 0.0497, B = 10000).- Figure_S3_reduced_PCA.png and table_S3_PCA5_loadings.csv, table_S3_PCA5_variance.csv, table_S3_PCA5_membership.csv: generated outputs of the reduced 5-variable PCA (Supplementary S3).- README.txt: full documentation, including a variable dictionary for all 23 columns.- LICENSE: MIT licence text for the code. Licensing: data and documentation are released under CC BY 4.0; the R analysis code is released under the MIT License (see the LICENSE file).