CONSIDERATIONS ON RECYCLING POSSIBILITIES OF AGRO-INDUSTRIAL WASTES BY ANAEROBIC DIGESTION TREATMENT

Abstract

In our country, the developments of the measures for the prevention of the environmental pollution are aligning to the UE Directives. The costs for the treatment of the water wastes are continuously increasing, following to the also increasing of the investments costs. Therefore it is necessary to accord attention for the alternatives of cleaning, treating, respective recycling of the agro-industrial wastes and their reintroduction in the natural circuit.
 At the processing of the food results wastes with high organic charge. The effluents form the processing of dairy products, sugar, starch, beer yeasts as well as breweries or distilleries are getting fast into acids fermentation, finally resulting organic acids. Such process water wastes can be released in the canalization by dilution or by a suitable treating. As an example, for the distillery wastes (distillery slops) with a high dry matter contents (4-20%), the waste water treatment plant shall be designed properly (with mechanical separation step and biological treatment) to ensure the capacity of purifying according to the high flow and increased concentration, due to the high CBOD5 concentration. The treatment of such water wastes can be realized with aerobic processes, which suppose a high energetic consumption. While in the aerobic purifying processes 50 % of the CBOD5 is involved in the forming of biomass and slurry in excess, in the anaerobic treatment processes (anaerobic or methane digestion) a high part of the substrate (until 70 %) is metabolized through the metabolic transformation of bacterial flora, with production of biogas. Therefore, the concentrated water wastes, with potential for the energy production could offer a possibility of energy replacement in the own processing units.
 The paper presents a review of the anaerobic digestion for different wastes from the agro-industrial processing and their potential for the biogas production. There are presented possibilities of mixture, respectively of co-digestion of different wastes the agro-industrial processing with other wastes from the agriculture (from cereals processing, biomass, manure etc). Simultaneously biogas plants from the praxis with functioning characteristics are presented.