Search results for "Aerobic digestion"
showing 10 items of 140 documents
Storing energy crops for methane production: Effects of solids content and biological additive
2007
The effect of storage on chemical characteristics and CH4 yield (taking into account loss of VS during storage) of a mixture of grasses and ryegrass, ensiled as such (low solids content) and after drying (medium and high solids) with and without biological additive, were studied in field and laboratory trials. Up to 87% and 98% of CH4 yield was preserved with low solids grass (initial TS 15.6%) and high solids ryegrass (initial TS 30.4%), respectively, after storage for 6months, while under suboptimal conditions at most 37% and 52% of CH4 yield were lost. Loss in CH4 yield was mainly due to VS loss, presumably caused by secondary fermentation as also suggested by increasing pH during storag…
Impact of crop species on bacterial community structure during anaerobic co-digestion of crops and cow manure
2008
The bacterial communities in three continuously stirred tank reactors co-digesting cow manure with grass silage, oat straw, and sugar beet tops, respectively, were investigated by 16S rRNA gene-based fingerprints and clone libraries. The analyses revealed both clearly distinct and similar phylotypes in the bacterial communities between the reactors. The major groups represented in the three reactors were Clostridia, unclassified Bacteria, and Bacteroidetes. Phylotypes affiliated with Bacilli or Deltaproteobacteria were unique to the sugar beet and straw reactor, respectively. Unclassified Bacteria dominated in sugar beet reactor while in the straw and grass reactor Clostridia was the domina…
Hydrolysis and microbial community analyses in two-stage anaerobic digestion of energy crops
2007
Aims: The roles of the diverse populations of micro-organisms responsible for biodegradation of organic matter to form methane and carbon dioxide are rudimentarily understood. To expand the knowledge on links between microbial communities and the rate limiting, hydrolytic stage of two-stage biogas production from energy crops, this study was performed. Methods and Results: The process performance. and microbial communities (as determined by fluorescence in situ hybridization) in two separate two-stage batch digestions of sugar beets and grass/clover were studied. The microbial populations developed in the hydrolytic stage of anaerobic digestion of beets and grass/clover showed very few simi…
Two-Stage Anaerobic Digestion of Energy Crops: Methane Production, Nitrogen Mineralisation and Heavy Metal Mobilisation
2006
Energy crops (willow, sugar beet and grass silage) were digested in pilot scale two-stage anaerobic digesters. The specific methane yields obtained were 0.16, 0.38 and 0.39 m3 kg(-1) added volatile solids (VSadded) for willow, sugar beet and grass, respectively, corresponding to yearly gross energy yields of 15, 53 and 26 megawatt-hours (MWh) per hectare. With grass and sugar beets as substrate, 84-85% of the harvestable methane was obtained within 30 days. In pilot scale two-stage digestion of willow and sugar beet, 56 and 85% of the laboratory scale methane yields were obtained, but digestion of grass in two-stage reactors yielded 5% more methane than digestion in laboratory scale complet…
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 …
Selecting sewage sludge treatment alternatives in modern wastewater treatment plants using environmental decision support systems
2015
The importance of the sewage sludge treatment within the field of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) suggests new dimensions of analysis where the relevance of economic criteria combined with the associated environmental issues are increasing the sludge management complexity. For supporting the decision process and for comparative purposes, this study assesses five alternative configurations for sludge treatment, namely: mesophilic and termophilic anaerobic digestion plus composting, incineration, gasification, and supercritical water oxidation (SCWO). The global warming potential (GWP) and the annual cash flow of each alternative are used to estimate a composite indicator for each alterna…
Laboratory investigations on co-digestion of energy crops and crop residues with cow manure for methane production: Effect of crop to manure ratio
2007
Abstract Anaerobic co-digestion of grass silage, sugar beet tops and oat straw with cow manure was evaluated in semi-continuously fed laboratory continuously stirred tank reactors (CSTRs). Co-digestion of manure and crops was shown to be feasible with feedstock volatile solids (VS) containing up to 40% of crops. The highest specific methane yields of 268, 229 and 213 l CH4 kg−1 VSadded in co-digestion of cow manure with grass, sugar beet tops and straw, respectively, were obtained with 30% of crop in the feedstock, corresponding to 85–105% of the methane potential in the substrates as determined by batch assays. Including 30% of crop in the feedstock increased methane production per digeste…
Designing an AnMBR-based WWTP for energy recovery from urban wastewater: The role of primary settling and anaerobic digestion
2015
The main objective of this paper is to assess different treatment schemes for designing a submerged anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) based WWTP. The economic impact of including a primary settling (PS) stage and further anaerobic digestion (AD) of the wasted sludge has been evaluated. The following operating scenarios were considered: sulphate-rich and low-sulphate urban wastewater (UWW) treatment at 15 and 30 ºC. To this aim, the optimum combination of design/operating parameters that resulted in minimum total cost (CAPEX plus OPEX) for the different schemes and scenarios was determined. The AnMBR design was based on both simulation and experimental results from an AnMBR plant featuri…
Energy recovery from Municipal Solid Waste in EU: proposals to assess the management performance under a circular economy perspective
2017
In 2015 the European Commission issued a package of documents on Circular Economy concerning an integrated revision of legislative proposals on waste management. The aim was to stimulate a European transition towards a circular economy concept, which is expected to foster competitiveness, sustainable economic growth and new jobs generation. Three indicators are proposed in this paper to contribute to the assessment of the energy recovery management performance from MSW in a scenario of circular economy: a) referring to MSW directly used (RMSW) or indirectly used (SRF) as input of thermochemical plants, an indicator can be the percentage of waste having LHV > 13MJ/kg; b) referring to the MSW…
Assessment of organic waste management methods through energy balance
2014
In Italy, the Organic Fraction of Municipal Solid W aste (OFMSW) is nowadays landfilled or processed through aerobic composting. The Italian towns curre ntly support a high cost for OFMSW disposal and cause a high environmental impact, because of long distance s travelled from towns to a few available landfills and fewer treatment places, as well as the used waste m anagement methods. An interesting option for OFMSW is Anaerobic Digestion (AD), producing biogas and “digestate”. In this survey a theoretical biogas plant was placed near a town of Sicily Region (Italy), centra lised with reference to the area considered for pro ducing OFMSW. The distances travelled every year to transport OFMS…