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Monitoring anaerobic digestion: a 2-year brewery case study

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posted on 2015-06-02, 10:55 authored by Tanja RaduTanja Radu, Richard BlanchardRichard Blanchard, Vincent Smedley, Helen Theaker, Andrew D. Wheatley
Operational data from an anaerobic wastewater treatment plant (expanded granular sludge bed (EGSB) reactor) were analysed before and after a defect with the solids separator. The results presented suggest that a newly available method for the analysis of total volatile fatty acids (VFAs) was ideal as a rapid, onsite, operational indicator of reactor stability. These total VFAs were shown to provide an earlier warning of the separator problem than the other rapid routine methods of monitoring digesters such as alkalinity and suspended solids. Chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal, pH and gas yield were not as useful for monitoring because of their slow response. The results are from a high rate reactor; the loads were 18kg COD/m3/d in the first year and 26 in the second with 4·4 d hydraulic retention time. The results for both years of operation demonstrate a 95% conversion of COD into gas with an additional contribution from solids digestion (specific gas yield of 0·4 l methane (CH4)/g CODrem). This high performance was attributed to the solubility of the COD and the efficient EGSB mixing.

Funding

This research is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under EP/J000361/1 Rural Hybrid Energy Enterprise Systems (RHEES) project.

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Research Unit

  • Centre for Renewable Energy Systems Technology (CREST)

Published in

Journal of Environmental Engineering and Science

Volume

9

Issue

4

Pages

207 - 213

Citation

RADU, T. ... et al, 2014. Monitoring anaerobic digestion: a 2-year brewery case study. Journal of Environmental Engineering and Science, 9 (4), pp. 207 - 213.

Publisher

© ICE Publishing

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2015-05-25

Copyright date

2014

Notes

This article was published in the Journal of Environmental Engineering and Science [© Thomas Telford Ltd.] and the website is at: http://www.icevirtuallibrary.com/journal/jenes

ISSN

1496-2551

eISSN

1496-256X

Language

  • en

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