Abstract
A novel compact three-stage anaerobic digester (HM3) was developed to combine the advantages of high solids anaerobic digestion (AD) and wet AD for co-digestion of food waste and horse manure. By having three separate chambers in the three-stage anaerobic digester, three different functional zones were created for high-solids hydrolysis, acidogenesis and wet methanogenesis. The results showed that the functionalized partitioning in HM3 significantly accelerated the solubilization of solid organic matters and the formation of volatile fatty acids, resulting in an increase of 11~23% in methane yield. VS reduction in the HM3 presents the highest rate of 71% compared to the controls. Pyrosequencing analysis indicated that different microbial communities in terms of hydrolyzing bacteria, acidogenic bacteria and methanogenic archaea were selectively enriched in the three separate chambers of the HM3. Moreover, the abundance of the methanogenic archaea was increased by 0.8~1.28 times compared to controls.
Highlights
Anaerobic digestion (AD) is an environmentally green and effective method for organic waste treatment and renewable energy recovery[1,2,3]
We anticipated that the overall performance of anaerobic digestion (AD) could be improved if the hydrolyzing and fermenting process of Horse manure (HM) and Food waste (FW) were conducted before methanogenesis within the same anaerobic digester
Given the issues associated with co-digestion of HM and FW, the requirement to effect additional biological solubilization and the need to deal with high total solids content, we designed a three-stage anaerobic digester in which the processes of hydrolysis, acidogenesis and methanogenesis could be independently controlled yet simultaneously operated within three separate chambers (Fig. 1)
Summary
Anaerobic digestion (AD) is an environmentally green and effective method for organic waste treatment and renewable energy recovery[1,2,3]. Given the issues associated with co-digestion of HM and FW, the requirement to effect additional biological solubilization and the need to deal with high total solids content, we designed a three-stage anaerobic digester in which the processes of hydrolysis, acidogenesis and methanogenesis could be independently controlled yet simultaneously operated within three separate chambers (Fig. 1). In this novel design, the hydrolysis and acidogenesis chambers operated as high solids digesters, while the methanogenesis chamber operated under wet AD conditions. The objectives of this research were to (a) evaluate the feasibility and potential of this novel anaerobic digester for anaerobic co-digestion of FW and HM and (b) to examine in-depth the interaction between bacterial and archaeal communities in our overall endeavor to enhance the AD of organic solid wastes
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