Development of a Statistical Model to Predict Methane Production from Waste Activated Sludge Co-Digested with Olive Mill Wastewater and Cattle Dung by Response Surface Methodology

Abstract

Nowadays, population growth is likely to lead to a wide variety of biomass wastes generation from the diversified human, industrial, and agricultural activities. Anaerobic digestion is mostly applied to manage biomass wastes and mitigate a huge spectrum of environmental damages. This paper aims to enhance the anaerobic digestion efficiency of multicomponent substrates, using a mixture of waste activated sludge (WAS), olive mill wastewater (OMW), and cattle manure (CM). A Response Surface Methodology is employed in experimental design to determine individual and interactive effects on methane yield and chemical oxygen demand reduction. After numerical optimization using Design Expert®, the optimum values of the test factors in actual were as follows: initial pH = 8, COD/N ratio = 47, 42, CM/WAS-OMW ratio = 0.352, TS = 42.94 g/L. The obtained results indicate that anaerobic co-digestion performance could be achieved by optimising substrate composition to assure a larger microbial synergistic effect.