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Fundamentals for Waste-to-Energy from Anaerobic Digestion Technologies: An Overview

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Handbook of Waste Biorefinery

Abstract

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a mature technology adopted extensively for the microbial conversion of organic substrates into value-added products. This chapter presents an overview of AD, emphasising the process mechanism and current challenges associated with its utilisation in the industry. Moreover, the chapter examines three promising methods to remedy the deficiencies of AD, thereby optimising resource recovery. The techniques discussed are pre-treatment, co-digestion and the use of additives. A comparative economic assessment of the aforementioned options is also provided. The findings reveal that pre-treatment technologies increase the bioavailability of organic matter to microbes for AD, thus enhancing product recovery. However, these processes are costly and energy-intensive, varying linearly in effect with the chemical composition of the substrate used. Consequently, these technologies should be employed selectively. Alternatively, multiple organic substrates may be co-digested. This approach amends the substrate C/N ratio to the suggested optimum range of AD and improves digestion stability by raising the digester tolerance to potential inhibitory compounds. Notwithstanding, the efficiency of this process is highly dependent on feedstock availability and sustainable waste management systems. The role of additives on improving biogas generation efficiency is undeniable. Additives are accessible and more importantly, adaptable for most AD systems. In this chapter, the recent advances in applying different types of additives that can be implemented on a large scale have been discussed.

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Correspondence to Saeid Baroutian .

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Thompson, T., Ngo, P.L., Rasapoor, M., Taghavi, N., Baroutian, S. (2022). Fundamentals for Waste-to-Energy from Anaerobic Digestion Technologies: An Overview. In: Jacob-Lopes, E., Queiroz Zepka, L., Costa Deprá, M. (eds) Handbook of Waste Biorefinery. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06562-0_19

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