Abstract
In this paper, performance analysis over two years’ operation of an industrial anaerobic digestion (AD) plant of a separately collected organic fraction of municipal solid waste is presented. The continuous plug-flow AD plant is still regularly operating and it has been fully operational since September 2018. Since then, it has been supplied with 40,000 t/y of pretreated separately collected organic fraction of municipal solid waste from municipalities of the Calabria region in Southern Italy. The AD process is carried out in a mesophilic regime at 40 ± 0.5 °C, using a constant hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 22 days and a substrate with average total solids and average total volatile solids of 30.0% and 22.2%, respectively. In the last two years, the plant produced an average of 191 m3 and 860 m3 of biogas per tonne (t) of organic input material and of total volatile solids, respectively, with an average methane specific production of 508 m3/t (total volatile solids). The average CH4 percentage in the biogas was of 59.09%. The obtained results came out from the combination of high organic content of separately collected organic fraction of municipal solid waste, optimized pretreatment system and operating conditions adopted.
Highlights
In recent years, the output of municipal solid waste (MSW), food waste, has increased dramatically
More pronounced deviations were observed after temporary feed stop but biogas and methane production returned to the reported average values, once the normal feeding conditions were re-established
Numerous studies of anaerobic digestion (AD) have already been performed at laboratory scale and on pilot plants, the transfer and replication of these studies results to industrial scale have rarely occurred because process management and fluctuations control are relatively more difficult in full-scale plants
Summary
The output of municipal solid waste (MSW), food waste, has increased dramatically. Directive n◦ 2008/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 November 2008, changed by current consolidated version of 2018/07/05 [2] imposes a priority order in waste management following this waste hierarchy: (a) prevention; (b) preparing for reuse; (c) recycling; (d) other recovery (e.g., energy recovery) and (e) disposal. This hierarchy must be followed both by consumers (a, b) and waste plant managers (c, d and e). Developing sustainable solutions for waste management, especially for the organic waste management, is among the great challenges of modern society
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