Abstract
Pretreatment of alcohol-distillery wastes with ceramic membranes was performed prior to anaerobic digestion. Ceramic membranes with 0.05 μm pore size were chosen based on the particle size distribution in raw wastes. In this pretreatment, chemical oxygen demand (COD) was reduced from 36,000 to 18,000 mg/l and suspended solids were almost completely removed. The permeates from the ceramic membrane were further separated by ultrafiltration, but further COD reduction by using the PM30 and PM10 membranes was not achieved. Mixed stillages exhibited higher fouling tendency than pure naked barley stillage. Several cleaning methods were attempted to recover water flux. Although lumen flushing was effective, hydrogen peroxide proved to be the most effective cleaning agent. The negative flux recovery after nitric acid cleaning could be explained by the ligand exchange theory. The performance of digester was greatly improved with membrane pretreatment, specially in the ease of naked barley based stillage.
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