Performance and stability of two-stage anaerobic digestion

Detection of acidification limit in anaerobic membrane bioreactors at ambient temperature

High-volume, low-strength industrial wastewaters constitute a large potential for biogas production, which could be realized by membrane bioreactors operating at the ambient temperature of the wastewater. However, the start-up of low-temperature anaerobic processes using unadapted inoculum can be sensitive to overloading, which results in acidification. This study assessed if a novel acidification limit test can be used to identify stable organic loading rates as well as process over-loading. The test is based on easy-to-apply batch experiments for determination of the hydrolysis rate constant and the specific methanogenic activity of the acetotrophic and hydrogenotrophic pathways. For evaluation, two anaerobic membrane bioreactors, treating synthetic dairy wastewater at an ambient temperature of 24 °C, were used with a slow or a rapid start-up regime, respectively. Tests for hydrolysis rate and methanogenic activity were performed throughout the experiment and were used to calculate acidification limits for each system throughout the start-up. The acidification limit test was able to successfully identify both stable operation of one reactor and process failure of the other reactor as the organic loading rate increased. The reactor failure was caused by over-loading the acetotrophic pathway and coincided with microbial changes observed in real-time PCR and moving window analysis. Overall, the acidification limit tests seem promising as an easy applicable method for estimating what organic loading rate can be utilized, without risking acidification of anaerobic systems.

A hybrid cascade control scheme for the VFA and COD regulation in two-stage anaerobic digestion processes

A hybrid (continuous-discrete) cascade control is proposed to regulate both, volatile fatty acids (VFA) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentrations in two-stage (acidogenic-methanogenic) anaerobic digestion (TSAD) processes. The outer loop is a discrete controller that regulates the COD concentration of the methanogenic bioreactor by using a daily off-line measurement and that modifies the set-point tracked by inner loop, which manipulates the dilution rate to regulate the VFA concentration of the acidogenic bioreactor, estimated by continuous on-line conductivity measurements, avoiding acidification. The experimental validation was conducted in a TSAD process for the treatment of tequila vinasses during 110days. Results showed that the proposed cascade control scheme was able to achieve the VFA and COD regulation by using conventional measurements under different set-point values in spite of adverse common scenarios in full-scale anaerobic digestion processes. Microbial composition analysis showed that the controller also favors the abundance and diversity toward methane production.

Two-stage anaerobic and post-aerobic mesophilic digestion of sewage sludge: Analysis of process performance and hygienization potential

Sequential anaerobic-aerobic digestion has been demonstrated to be effective for enhanced sludge stabilization, in terms of increased solid reduction and improvement of sludge dewaterability. In this study, we propose a modified version of the sequential anaerobic-aerobic digestion process by operating the aerobic step under mesophilic conditions (T=37 °C), in order to improve the aerobic degradation kinetics of soluble and particulate chemical oxygen demand (COD). Process performance has been assessed in terms of "classical parameters" such as volatile solids (VS) removal, biogas production, COD removal, nitrogen species, and polysaccharide and protein fate. The aerobic step was operated under intermittent aeration to achieve nitrogen removal. Aerobic mesophilic conditions consistently increased VS removal, providing 32% additional removal vs. 20% at 20 °C. Similar results were obtained for nitrogen removal, increasing from 64% up to 99% at the higher temperature. Improved sludge dewaterability was also observed with a capillary suction time decrease of ~50% during the mesophilic aerobic step. This finding may be attributable to the decreased protein content in the aerobic digested sludge. The post-aerobic digestion exerted a positive effect on the reduction of microbial indicators while no consistent improvement of hygienization related to the increased temperature was observed. The techno-economic analysis of the proposed digestion layout showed a net cost saving for sludge disposal estimated in the range of 28-35% in comparison to the single-phase anaerobic digestion.

Digestion performance of various combinations of thermophilic and mesophilic sludge digestion systems

Various combinations of single- and multi-stage anaerobic and aerobic-anaerobic digestion systems were studied to evaluate their solids reduction potential with capabilities to control sulfur-based biosolids odor compounds. All the multi-stage digestion systems removed more volatile solids than the single-stage anaerobic digestion systems, even at the same overall retention time. However, digestion systems with mesophilic digestion as the final stage showed a much lower headspace organic sulfur content in the dewatered biosolids than the systems with thermophilic digestion as the final stage. This observation leads to the conclusion that placing a mesophilic anaerobic digestion system at the end of multi-stage digestion systems will enable greater sulfur-based odor reduction from dewatered biosolids with greater solid reduction than single-stage mesophilic or thermophilic digestion systems.