scholarly journals Experimental power of laboratory-scale results and transferability to full-scale anaerobic digestion

2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 983-991
Author(s):  
Maximilian Lüdtke ◽  
Åke Nordberg ◽  
Christian Baresel

Anaerobic digestion is today internationally acknowledged as an environmentally sound process for energy and nutrient recovery from organic wastes, and it is the dominant sludge treatment technology in most countries’ wastewater treatment plants. Laboratory- or pilot-scale experiments are commonly used as a first step to investigate the potential of new ideas or to confirm research hypothesis before confirmation in full-scale. The objectives of this study were to investigate transferability of methane yield assessments between laboratory- and full-scale, and to compare the influence of experimental uncertainties on experimental power in parallel continuous digester experiments for the two scales. Both batch experiment data (used in a simple equation), as well as continuous laboratory experiments, could be used to predict full-scale methane yield with a high accuracy (<5% difference). Full-scale digesters significantly outperformed hand-fed laboratory digesters in terms of experimental power regarding relative differences in methane yield between two digesters operated in parallel. However, to justify costly long-term continuous laboratory-scale experiments with sufficient experimental power and potentially high transferability, resources also have to be allocated to measures that ensure a high data quality from full-scale reference facilities.

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 3166
Author(s):  
Huihuang H. Ding ◽  
Polina Kotova ◽  
Christopher Shaw ◽  
Youngseck Hong ◽  
Sheng Chang

Anaerobic digestion (AD) has benefits in sludge management, energy recovery, and pathogen reduction. In order to better understand the mechanisms of biological hydrolysis (BH) pretreatment on AD, biochemical methane potential (BMP) and continuous stirred-tank reactor (CSTR) tests were utilized to compare untreated municipal combined sludge with pilot-scale BH pretreated sludge. During the BH process, there was 15%, 30%, and 33% (w/w) volatile solids (VS) reduction after BH at 42 °C (BH42) for 24, 48, and 72 h, respectively; under BH61 (42 °C for 36 h and 61 °C for 6 h), and there was 10% and 30% (w/w) overall VS reduction after 36-h and 42-h hydrolysis, respectively. BMP results showed that BH42-pretreated sludge had 22.6% enhancement of methane yield compared to untreated sludge, and BH61 pretreated sludge had 29.4% enhancement of methane yield. Both temperature and solids’ retention time (SRT) contributed to the enhanced AD performance within 36 h, while temperature played more important roles after 36-h BH pretreatment. CSTR tests confirmed the acceleration of anaerobic digestion by BH pretreatment, and higher enhancement was observed when SRT of anaerobic digestion was shorter than 16 days. Through a literature review of BH-related studies, the possible mechanisms were highlighted for further optimization on the scale-up systems in order to reduce carbon footprint and operating expenditure for wastewater treatment plants.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 590
Author(s):  
Aiban Abdulhakim Saeed Ghaleb ◽  
Shamsul Rahman Mohamed Kutty ◽  
Gasim Hayder Ahmed Salih ◽  
Ahmad Hussaini Jagaba ◽  
Azmatullah Noor ◽  
...  

Man-made organic waste leads to the rapid proliferation of pollution around the globe. Effective bio-waste management can help to reduce the adverse effects of organic waste while contributing to the circular economy at the same time. The toxic oily-biological sludge generated from oil refineries’ wastewater treatment plants is a potential source for biogas energy recovery via anaerobic digestion. However, the oily-biological sludge’s carbon/nitrogen (C/N) ratio is lower than the ideal 20–30 ratio required by anaerobic digestion technology for biogas production. Sugarcane bagasse can be digested as a high C/N co-substrate while the oily-biological sludge acts as a substrate and inoculum to improve biogas production. In this study, the best C/N with co-substrate volatile solids (VS)/inoculum VS ratios for the co-digestion process of mixtures were determined empirically through batch experiments at temperatures of 35–37 °C, pH (6–8) and 60 rpm mixing. The raw materials were pre-treated mechanically and thermo-chemically to further enhance the digestibility. The best condition for the sugarcane bagasse delignification process was 1% (w/v) sodium hydroxide, 1:10 solid-liquid ratio, at 100 °C, and 150 rpm for 1 h. The results from a 33-day batch anaerobic digestion experiment indicate that the production of biogas and methane yield were concurrent with the increasing C/N and co-substrate VS/inoculum VS ratios. The total biogas yields from C/N 20.0 with co-substrate VS/inoculum VS 0.06 and C/N 30.0 with co-substrate VS/inoculum VS 0.18 ratios were 2777.0 and 9268.0 mL, respectively, including a methane yield of 980.0 and 3009.3 mL, respectively. The biogas and methane yield from C/N 30.0 were higher than the biogas and methane yields from C/N 20.0 by 70.04 and 67.44%, respectively. The highest biogas and methane yields corresponded with the highest C/N with co-substrate VS/inoculum VS ratios (30.0 and 0.18), being 200.6 mL/g VSremoved and 65.1 mL CH4/g VSremoved, respectively.


2017 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kuangxin Zhou ◽  
Johan Stüber ◽  
Rabea-Luisa Schubert ◽  
Christian Kabbe ◽  
Matthias Barjenbruch

Abstract Agricultural reuse of dewatered sludge is a valid route for sludge valorization for small and mid-size wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) due to the direct utilization of nutrients. A more stringent of German fertilizer ordinance requires the degradation of 20% of the synthetic additives like polymeric substance within two years, which came into force on 1 January 2017. This study assessed the use of starch-based polymers for full-scale dewatering of municipal sewage sludge. The laboratory-scale and pilot-scale trials paved the way for full-scale trials at three WWTPs in Germany. The general feasibility of applying starch-based ‘green’ polymers in full-scale centrifugation was demonstrated. Depending on the sludge type and the process used, the substitution potential was up to 70%. Substitution of 20–30% of the polyacrylamide (PAM)-based polymer was shown to achieve similar total solids (TS) of the dewatered sludge. Optimization of operational parameters as well as machinery set up in WWTPs is recommended in order to improve the shear stability force of sludge flocs and to achieve higher substitution potential. This study suggests that starch-based biodegradable polymers have great potential as alternatives to synthetic polymers in sludge dewatering.


2000 ◽  
Vol 42 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 201-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Macarie

During the last 20 years, as a result of its low cost, anaerobic digestion has turned into a popular wastewater treatment technology. Today, with at least 1330 reactors constructed in the world, it is considered to have reached technological maturity. Until recently however, it was used quite exclusively for the treatment of food industry effluents. It is only during the last 10 years that anaerobic digestion has started to be applied massively to the treatment of sewage and effluents from other industrial activities. During the 1970s and 1980s, the chemical and petrochemical industries were almost refractory to the introduction of anaerobic digestion. The situation has reversed since 1990 and at least 80 full-scale anaerobic plants are nowadays treating this type of waste. Nevertheless, a great amount of promotion is still required before anaerobic digestion can be considered as an accepted technology by this industry. The paper presents the actual situation of anaerobic treatment at full-scale inthis industrial sector as well as recent developments at lab-scale and discusses some important concepts to consider before the implementation of an anaerobic treatment. In particular a table is presented with the main characteristics of 65 of the 80 full-scale plants identified to date. The probable reasons for the slow initial development of anaerobic treatment are also discussed and it is shown that anaerobic digestion has been the solution to treatment problems for which aerobic systems were inefficient.


2009 ◽  
Vol 60 (6) ◽  
pp. 1525-1532 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Pérez-Elvira ◽  
M. Fdz-Polanco ◽  
F. I. Plaza ◽  
G. Garralón ◽  
F. Fdz-Polanco

Prior research indicates that ultrasounds can be used in batch reactors as pre-treatment before anaerobic digestion, but the specific energy required at laboratory-scale is too high. This work evaluates both the continuous ultrasound device performance (efficiency and solubilisation) and the operation of anaerobic digesters continuously fed with sonicated sludge, and presents energy balance considerations. The results of sludge solubilisation after the sonication treatment indicate that, applying identical specific energy, it is better to increase the power than the residence time. Working with secondary sludge, batch biodegradability tests show that by applying 30 kWh/m3 of sludge, it is possible to increase biogas production by 42%. Data from continuous pilot-scale anaerobic reactors (V=100 L) indicate that operating with a conventional HRT = 20 d, a reactor fed with pre-treated sludge increases the volatile solids removal and the biogas production by 25 and 37% respectively. Operating with HRT = 15 d, the removal efficiency is similar to the obtained with a reactor fed with non-hydrolysed sludge at HTR = 20 d, although the specific biogas productivity per volume of reactor is higher for the pretreated sludge. Regarding the energy balance, although for laboratory-scale devices it is negative, full-scale suppliers state a net generation of 3–10 kW per kW of energy used.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rasmus H. Kirkegaard ◽  
Simon J. McIlroy ◽  
Jannie M. Kristensen ◽  
Marta Nierychlo ◽  
Søren M. Karst ◽  
...  

AbstractAnaerobic digestion is widely applied to treat organic waste at wastewater treatment plants. Characterisation of the underlying microbiology represents a source of information to develop strategies for improved operation. To this end, we investigated the microbial community composition of thirty-two full-scale digesters over a six-year period using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Sampling of the sludge fed into these systems revealed that several of the most abundant populations were likely inactive and immigrating with the influent. This observation indicates that a failure to consider immigration will interfere with correlation analysis and give an inaccurate picture of the active microbial community. Furthermore, several abundant OTUs could not be classified to genus level with commonly applied taxonomies, making inference of their function unreliable. As such, the existing MiDAS taxonomy was updated to include these abundant phylotypes. The communities of individual plants surveyed were remarkably similar – with only 300 OTUs representing 80% of the total reads across all plants, and 15% of these identified as likely inactive immigrating microbes. By identifying the abundant and active taxa in anaerobic digestion, this study paves the way for targeted characterisation of the process important organisms towards an in-depth understanding of the microbial ecology of these biotechnologically important systems.


2010 ◽  
Vol 101 (23) ◽  
pp. 9006-9011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronan Le Hyaric ◽  
Jean-Pierre Canler ◽  
Bruno Barillon ◽  
Pascale Naquin ◽  
Rémy Gourdon

2006 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 79-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.C. Glover ◽  
C. Printemps ◽  
K. Essemiani ◽  
J. Meinhold

Several levels of complexity are available for modelling of wastewater treatment plants. Modelling local effects rely on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approaches whereas activated sludge models (ASM) represent the global methodology. By applying both modelling approaches to pilot plant and full scale systems, this paper evaluates the value of each method and especially their potential combination. Model structure identification for ASM is discussed based on a full-scale closed loop oxidation ditch modelling. It is illustrated how and for what circumstances information obtained via CFD (computational fluid dynamics) analysis, residence time distribution (RTD) and other experimental means can be used. Furthermore, CFD analysis of the multiphase flow mechanisms is employed to obtain a correct description of the oxygenation capacity of the system studied, including an easy implementation of this information in the classical ASM modelling (e.g. oxygen transfer). The combination of CFD and activated sludge modelling of wastewater treatment processes is applied to three reactor configurations, a perfectly mixed reactor, a pilot scale activated sludge basin (ASB) and a real scale ASB. The application of the biological models to the CFD model is validated against experimentation for the pilot scale ASB and against a classical global ASM model response. A first step in the evaluation of the potential of the combined CFD-ASM model is performed using a full scale oxidation ditch system as testing scenario.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudi Nugroho ◽  
Ikbal Mahmud ◽  
Nurtya Sulasmi

A research of wastewater treatment technology come from money producing industry was conducted in laboratory scale using 10 lt of Anaerobic Fixed Bed Reactor. The money producing wastewater was treated by mixing with domestic wastewater with various compositions. The wastewater was fed into the bioreactor by draw and fill daily.The results show that the optimum of COD removal is 52,5%, optimum loading is 0, 95 g-COD/l/day and optimum flowrate is 0,5 l/day. The optimum compossition of money producing wastewater towards domestic wastewater is 30%. These optimum conditions can be used as a designed criteria for full scale of anaerobic bioreactor in the money producing industry. Katakunci : Wastewater, Anaerobic, Fixed Bed Reactor


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