Pre-treatment of filter cake for anaerobic digestion in sugarcane biorefineries: Assessment of batch versus semi-continuous experiments

Leandro Janke, Sören Weinrich, Athaydes F. Leite, Heike Sträuber, Marcell Nikolausz, Michael Nelles and Walter Stinner

Renewable Energy, 2019, vol. 143, issue C, 1416-1426

Abstract: Anaerobic digestion (AD) of sugarcane filter cake (SFC) was investigated by comparing the performance of pre-treatment methods in biochemical methane potential (BMP) tests and semi-continuous experiments. For that, SFC was pre-treated by autoclaving the substrate alone or with sodium hydroxide (NaOH). Experimental data from BMP tests were fitted to a kinetics model and further used for simulating the AD process in a continuous stirred-tank reactor (CSTR). BMP tests showed differences (p < 0.05) in total methane potential (SBMP), which have affected methane yields during simulation in a CSTR. Untreated produced 185 mL CH4 gVS−1, autoclaved pre-treatment 174 mL CH4 gVS−1 and autoclaved with NaOH pre-treatment 222 mL CH4 gVS−1. Interestingly, such higher performance of autoclaved with NaOH pre-treatment was only observed at earlier stages during semi-continuous feeding experiment. At steady-state no significant differences (p > 0.05) in terms of methane yield were observed among the reactors (average of 224 mL CH4 gVS−1). These results demonstrate that the benefits of pre-treatment could only be observed in BMP tests, which is likely explained by a better adaptation of the microbial community to the substrate during long term semi-continuous experiment, making SFC pre-treatment ineffective in a single-stage CSTR and under this feeding regime.

Keywords: Biomass conversion; Degradation kinetics; Feeding regime; Methane potential (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148119306883
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:143:y:2019:i:c:p:1416-1426

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2019.05.029

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().