Unraveling the literature chaos around free ammonia inhibition in anaerobic digestion

2020

International audience; This review aims at providing a unified methodology for free ammonia nitrogen (FAN) calculation in anaerobic digesters, also identifying the factors causing the huge disparity in FAN inhibitory limits. Results show that assuming ideal equilibria overestimates the FAN concentrations up to 37% when compared to MINTEQA2 Equilibrium Speciation Model, used as reference. The Davies equation led to major improvements. Measuring the concentrations of NH 4 þ , Na þ and K þ was enough to achieve major corrections. The best compromise between complexity and accuracy was achieved with a novel modified Davies equation, with systematic differences in FAN concentrations of 2% when …