Optimization of biogas production from waste activated sludge through serial digestion

E. Athanasoulia, P. Melidis and A. Aivasidis

Renewable Energy, 2012, vol. 47, issue C, 147-151

Abstract: The treatment and disposal of excess sludge represents a problem of growing importance of wastewater treatment plants all over the world. Anaerobic digestion is the most common method for sludge stabilization resulting in biogas production at the same time. In the present study, in pilot-scale experiments, process performance and biogas production of a cascade of two methanogenic continuously stirred tank reactors (CSTR) connected in series, was compared to a conventional one-step CSTR reactor treating sewage sludge. Retention times between 12.3 and 19.7 days were examined for both systems. Results showed that the serial configuration could improve biogas production by 9.5–40.1%. Biogas selectivity estimated 0.49 ± 0.06 m3biogas/kg TVSdegraded for the cascade and 0.44 ± 0.02 m3biogas/kg TVSdegraded for the one-step process. Both systems contained low VFA concentrations in the effluent. In terms of volatile suspended solids reduction, values ranged between 31.5% and 33.8% for the one-step process and between 36.2% and 40.7% for the cascade. The study thus suggests that the process performance and biogas production from sewage sludge can be optimized through serial digestion.

Keywords: Sludge; Anaerobic digestion; Serial digestion; Biogas production (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148112002790
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:47:y:2012:i:c:p:147-151

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2012.04.038

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 ().