Biogas Production Modelling Based on a Semi-Continuous Feeding Operation in a Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant

Derick Lima, Li Li () and Gregory Appleby
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Derick Lima: School of Electrical and Data Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney 2007, Australia
Li Li: School of Electrical and Data Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney 2007, Australia
Gregory Appleby: Sydney Water Corporation, Sydney 2124, Australia

Energies, 2025, vol. 18, issue 5, 1-18

Abstract: Anaerobic digestion is a common method for treating sewage sludge in municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). However, modelling this process can be very challenging due to the complexity of biochemical reactions. This paper presents a novel methodology that estimates biogas production from sewage sludge by considering the semi-continuous sludge-feeding process of the digester. In most WWTPs, the sewage sludge treatment operates in a dynamic process; therefore, using a time-dependent tool that represents this dynamic process is essential for accurately representing biogas production. The biogas production results from the proposed model are compared against the historical data for a large-scale WWTP located in Sydney, Australia. The proposed model shows great accuracy and follows the historical data trend very precisely. The average biogas production based on historical data for 2020, 2021, and 2022 was 37,337 m 3 /d, 31,695 m 3 /d, and 23,350 m 3 /d, whereas for the proposed model, it was 37,960 m 3 /d, 30,465 m 3 /d, and 23,080 m 3 /d. Over the three-year period, the average biogas production was 30,794 m 3 /d for historical data and 30,503 m 3 /d for the proposed model, which shows a great level of accuracy (R 2 of 0.85 and average error of 4.64%) on the results of the proposed model and WWTP historical data.

Keywords: anaerobic digestion; biogas; first-in first-out (FIFO) method; dynamic modelling; retention time; wastewater treatment plants; sewage sludge (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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