Performances of mechanical and low-temperature (<100 degrees C) thermal pre-treatments were investigated to improve the present efficiency of anaerobic digestion (AD) carried out on waste activated sludge (WAS) in the largest Italian wastewater treatment plant (2,300,000 p.e.). Thermal pre-treatments returned disintegration rates of one order of magnitude higher than mechanical ones (about 25% vs. 1.5%). The methane specific production increased by 21% and 31%, with respect to untreated samples, for treatment conditions of respectively 70 and 90 degrees C, 3 h. Thermal pre-treatments also decreased WAS viscosity. Preliminary energy and economic assessments demonstrated that a WAS final total solid content of 5% was enough to avoid the employment of auxiliary methane for the pre-treatment at 90 degrees C and the subsequent AD process, provided that all the heat generated was transferred to WAS through heat exchangers. Moreover, the total revenues from sale of the electricity produced from biogas increased by 10% with respect to the present scenario. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.