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Anaerobic Digestion of Wastewater and High Organic Load Liquid Effluents: Advances in the Technology

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "A4: Bio-Energy".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2021) | Viewed by 9741

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Chemical and Environmental Bioprocess Engineering Group, Natural Resources Institute (IRENA), University of Leon, 24071 Leon, Spain
Interests: bioprocesses; anaerobic digestion; wastewater treatment; waste; energy; recovery; circular economy; sustainability
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Guest Editor
Department of Electrical and Systems and Automation Engineering, University of León, 24007 León, Spain
Interests: energy conservation; pyrolysis; renewable energies; energy storage; life cycle assessment; hydrogen
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Biological processes for wastewater treatment and organic waste stabilization are an essential component in today’s society. These treatments are widely used thanks to their innumerable advantages associated with the simplicity of their installation, the lower treatment costs compared with other alternatives, and because they are easily adaptable to the local conditions of each application.

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is one of the most applied technologies among the EU members since it is an efficient way of stabilizing organic wastes and treating wastewaters. Anaerobic digestion is a biochemical process that facilitates the conversion of organic matter into methane and CO2. This technology has several inherent benefits ranging from the reduction of solids content, pathogens removal, and the minimization of odor problems, to the production of renewable energy by the valorization of biogas. All these factors aid in optimizing costs in treatment plants.

AD is currently a well-known and applied technology, but the increasing volume of waste generated by today’s society and the wide characteristics of the effluents demand more adaptable and efficient processes.

Thus, this Special Issue seeks contributions regarding recent advances in AD technology focusing on the enhancement of this process by a multi-disciplinary approach. We therefore invite authors to contribute papers on technical developments, review manuscripts, and case studies regarding the anaerobic treatment of high-organic-load effluents and wastewater, the anaerobic digestion of complex liquid effluents, pre-treatment methods, or the addition of supplements to improve AD yields and processing capacity. This Special Issue also focuses on combination of different biological systems coupled to AD for increasing the global performance and efficiency of energy use and facilitating digestate management.

Prof. Dr. Elia Judith Martínez Torres
Dr. Jose Guillermo Rosas
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • Advances in anaerobic digestion technology
  • Treatment of high-organic-load streams
  • Anaerobic digestion of complex liquid effluents
  • Pre-treatment methods for enhancing AD
  • Novelties in AD technology, including the addition of different types of supplements
  • Progress in bioreactor design
  • Bio-electrochemical systems coupled to AD
  • Microbial population of AD systems
  • Digestate valorization

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 2100 KiB  
Article
The Use of Flat Ceramic Membranes for Purification of the Liquid Fraction of the Digestate from Municipal Waste Biogas Plants
by Agnieszka Urbanowska and Małgorzata Kabsch-Korbutowicz
Energies 2021, 14(13), 3947; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14133947 - 1 Jul 2021
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2103
Abstract
Due to the rising water deficit in agriculture, digestate is increasingly being considered not only as an alternative fertiliser but also as a potential source of water. The use of recycled water for crop irrigation requires that it be treated in such a [...] Read more.
Due to the rising water deficit in agriculture, digestate is increasingly being considered not only as an alternative fertiliser but also as a potential source of water. The use of recycled water for crop irrigation requires that it be treated in such a way that contaminants from the fermented biomass are not returned to the environment. Membrane processes can provide promising results in this regard. This study seeks to achieve membrane filtration using flat ceramic membranes for effective digestate liquid fraction treatment from a municipal waste biogas plant. Membranes of 1, 5, 15, and 50 kDa, and 0.14 and 0.45 µm are examined. The results obtained show that the application of a sedimentation process, as a preliminary step in the purification of the digestate, allows for a significant reduction in the content of contaminants in the solution. By analysing the effectiveness of the liquid fraction of the digestate purification in the sedimentation-membrane filtration process using flat ceramic membranes, it can be stated that all the membranes tested can be applied in the digestate purification. With an increase in the cut-off value, a deterioration in the quality of the digestate can be observed. The use of the sedimentation process before the membrane process not only improves the final quality of the digestate but also reduces the intensity of membrane fouling. Full article
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19 pages, 2377 KiB  
Article
The Effect of Antibiotics on Mesophilic Anaerobic Digestion Process of Cattle Manure
by Izabela Koniuszewska, Monika Harnisz, Ewa Korzeniewska, Małgorzata Czatzkowska, Jan Paweł Jastrzębski, Łukasz Paukszto, Sylwia Bajkacz, Ewa Felis and Paulina Rusanowska
Energies 2021, 14(4), 1125; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14041125 - 20 Feb 2021
Cited by 18 | Viewed by 3464
Abstract
This study explored the effect of eight antimicrobials on the efficiency of biogas production in the anaerobic digestion (AD) process of cattle manure. The microbiome involved in AD, presence and number of genes mcrA, MSC and MST specific for Archaea, and [...] Read more.
This study explored the effect of eight antimicrobials on the efficiency of biogas production in the anaerobic digestion (AD) process of cattle manure. The microbiome involved in AD, presence and number of genes mcrA, MSC and MST specific for Archaea, and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) concentration in digestate (D) were examined. Supplementation of antibiotics to substrate significantly lowered biogas production. Amoxicillin caused a 75% decrease in CH4 production in comparison with the control samples. Enrofloxacin, tetracycline, oxytetracycline, and chlortetracycline reduced the amount of biogas produced by 36, 39, 45 and 53%, respectively. High-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA results revealed that bacteria dominated the Archaea microorganisms in all samples. Moreover, antibiotics led to a decrease in the abundance of the genes mcrA, MSC, MST, and induced an increase in the number of tetracyclines resistance genes. Antibiotics decreased the efficiency of the AD process and lowered the quantity of CH4 obtained, while stimulating an increase in the number of ARGs in D. This work reveals how antimicrobials affect the cattle manure AD process and changes in microbial biodiversity, number of functional genes and ARGs in the digestate due to drugs exposure. It also, provides useful, practical information about the AD process. Full article
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17 pages, 2449 KiB  
Article
Improving the Anaerobic Digestion of Wine-Industry Liquid Wastes: Treatment by Electro-Oxidation and Use of Biochar as an Additive
by Cristian Bernabé Arenas Sevillano, Marco Chiappero, Xiomar Gomez, Silvia Fiore and E. Judith Martínez
Energies 2020, 13(22), 5971; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13225971 - 16 Nov 2020
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 3311
Abstract
Wine lees have a great potential to obtain clean energy in the form of biogas through anaerobic digestion due to their high organic load. However, wine lees are a complex substrate and may likely give rise to instabilities leading to failure of the [...] Read more.
Wine lees have a great potential to obtain clean energy in the form of biogas through anaerobic digestion due to their high organic load. However, wine lees are a complex substrate and may likely give rise to instabilities leading to failure of the biological process. This work analysed the digestion of wine lees using two different approaches. First, electro-oxidation was applied as pre-treatment using boron-doped diamond-based electrodes. The voltage was 25 V and different treatment times were tested (ranging from 0.08 to 1.5 h) at 25 °C. Anaerobic digestion of wine lees was evaluated in batch tests to investigate the effect of electro-oxidation on biogas yield. Electro-oxidation exhibited a significant positive effect on biogas production increasing its value up to 330 L kg−1 of volatile solids after 1.5 h of treatment, compared to 180 L kg−1 of volatile solids measured from raw wine lees. As a second approach, the addition of biochar to the anaerobic digestion of wine lees was investigated; in the experimental conditions considered in the present study, the addition of biochar did not show any positive effect on anaerobic digestion performance. Full article
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