Co-digestion of sewage sludge and crude glycerol from biodiesel production

E. Athanasoulia, P. Melidis and A. Aivasidis

Renewable Energy, 2014, vol. 62, issue C, 73-78

Abstract: Biodiesel has become one of the most attractive fuels since it was globally understood the renewability of its nature. Glycerol is a major byproduct of biodiesel production which is often regarded as a waste stream which is accompanied by a significant disposal cost. The effect of glycerol on the performance of a cascade of two anaerobic continuous stirred tank (CSTR) reactors treating thickened sludge at mesophilic conditions was investigated. The objective of this study was to evaluate the use of glycerol as a co-substrate during the anaerobic treatment of sewage sludge. For this purpose, feed mixtures of sewage sludge supplemented with 0%, 2%, 3% and 4% (v/v) glycerol were tested at hydraulic retention times between 12.3 d and 19.7 d. By adding 4% of glycerol, the system failed due to overloading. In all other cases, biodegradability of mixtures estimated to be higher than 88%, while the methane yield coefficient was 0.8 Lbiogas/g TVSremoved. Moreover, co-digestion improved biogas production by 3.8–4.7 times.

Keywords: Co-digestion; Sewage sludge; Crude glycerol; Biodiesel; Biogas; Serial digestion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148113003339
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:62:y:2014:i:c:p:73-78

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2013.06.040

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 ().