Modeling the performance of anaerobic digestion reactor by the anaerobic digestion system model (ADSM)

Abstract

Anaerobic digestion is a highly promising and environmental-friendly technology for processing organic waste and organic wastewater. It is quite difficult to research and simulate the anaerobic digestion process by traditional dynamic methodologies because of its high complexity and dynamic nature. System Dynamic or System Thinking was highly appropriate for modeling the complex system due to its advantages that combines structure and non-structure. The aim of the work was to develop an anaerobic digestion system model (ADSM) by the System Thinking methodology and to estimate a general and reduced set of parameters by the self-adjusting procedures of the System Dynamic. Furthermore, this research aimed to implement ADSM to simulate the performance of a lab-scale process for anaerobic digestion experiments on homemade wastewater with glucose and to simulate the performance of a full-scale anaerobic digester for wastewater from cornstarch industrial wastewater. The results of simulating the performance of the anaerobic digestion by ADSM fit with the experimental data better than the results of the Anaerobic Digestion Model No. 1 (ADM1) developed by IWA task group for mathematical modeling of anaerobic digestion process in 2002. This finding indicates that ADSM offers a reliable reference point for future anaerobic digestion simulations.