Application of the IWA Anaerobic Digestion Model (ADM1) for the Valorization of Maize Residues in Morocco

Abstract

The modeling of the natural biological process of anaerobic digestion (AD) or methanization is a metabolic process of fermenting the organic waste in a biogas reactor without oxygen. The Anaerobic Digestion Model No. 1 (ADM1) discovered by international water association (IWA) is the model used for the simulation study conducted in order to demonstrate and evaluate the applicability of ADM1 to lignocellulosic biomass (LB) such as maize waste (MW) in Morocco which is the subject of this research. In this paper, the technique of anaerobic digestion has been used as a way to recover the solid waste, which is the MW into biogas, by the process of fermentation of the complex polymers into monomers and oligomers. The use of ADM1 has been based on the integrity of this model that takes into account many variables and many settings, such as the physico-chemical processes, which are very important systems in the modeling of anaerobic digestion, as well as the biochemical process that includes biochemical equations which compose the core of any model that include biological reactions. This study has been done by using the anaerobic digestion model 1 (ADM1) under mesophilic temperature (35C), knowing that the mathematical and numerical modeling of this study is the main objective. This work has been done with the intention of modeling and simulating the production of methane from the degradation of organic waste, under different ranges of pH, in order to see what effects may be applied to the acidogenesis and methanogenesis phases, taking in consideration the effect of the inhibition phenomena. The results indicate a significant decrease in glucose along with the increase of methane.