An experimental study of the fermentation of living garbage using a combined explosion

Abstract

To reduce the steam pressure and steam consumption in an explosion, this study proposed a new process that can improve the treatment efficiency of living garbage, namely, exploding the living garbage using steam and compressed air. Moreover, different combinations of steam pressure and compressed air were applied to the explosion of living garbage. The test results implied that, compared with untreated living garbage, those combined explosions showed a methane yield increase between 8.63% and 69.02% after anaerobic fermentation. Given a certain explosion pressure, the methane yield increased with the steam pressure at a gradually reduced rate. Compared with living garbage exploded by pure steam at pressures of 4.0 and 3.0 MPa, those exploded using steam at 2.0 MPa and compressed air at 4.0 MPa merely presented a methane yield reduction of 6.41% and 4.33%, respectively. The combined blasting steam pressure to total pressure ratio of 0.5 was sufficient: This could not only ensure that the blasting effect could reduce the required steam source pressure but also save steam by 40% to 50% by volume, improve efficiency, and overcome the problem of a need for as voluminous a high-pressure steam source.