Comparison of single-stage and two-stage anaerobic co-digestion of food waste and activated sludge for hydrogen and methane production

F. Baldi, I. Pecorini and R. Iannelli

Renewable Energy, 2019, vol. 143, issue C, 1755-1765

Abstract: In this study, the co-digestion of food waste and activated sludge was evaluated in a two-stage anaerobic system and compared to the traditional single-stage process. The two-stage system was composed by two reactors connected in series able to perform the fermentative and the methanogenic phases separated. Experiments were carried out in semi-continuous mode under mesophilic conditions (37 °C). The two-stage technology achieved an overall improvement of the anaerobic performances. Results highlighted an increase in biogas production and volatile solids degradation of 26% and 9%, respectively. Considering the whole two-stage system, i.e. the sum of the biogas productions of the first and the second digester, these percentages increased up to 35.0%. Concerning gas quality, the two-stage system achieved a hydrogen rich biogas in the first fermentative reactor and an improvement of methane content in the second methanogenic digester. The average methane content shifted from 61.2% to 70.1%. The highest methane production of the two-stage process was due to improved substrate hydrolysis, with increased amounts of volatile fatty acids made readily available in the second stage.

Keywords: Hydrogen; Methane; Food waste; Activated sludge; Co-digestion; Two-stage process (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148119307955
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:1755-1765

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2019.05.122

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 ().