ADM1 applications for a hybrid up-flow anaerobic sludge-filter bed reactor performance and for a batch thermophilic anaerobic digestion of thermally pretreated waste activated sludge

Abstract

The anaerobic digestion process comprises a whole network of sequential and parallel reactions of biochemical and physicochemical nature. Anaerobic digesters often exhibit significant stability problems that may be avoibed only through appropriate control strategies. Such strategies require, in general, developing appropriate mathematical models aiming at understanding and optimizing the anaerobic digestion process, describing these reactions in structured manner. This work reviews the IWA Anaerobic Digestion Model No. 1 (ADM1) and discusses two model applications: the anaerobic digestion of wine distillery vinasse as substrate in a 9.8-1 hybrid UASFB reactor and batch thermophilic anaerobic sigestion of thermally pretreated waste activated sludge. Predictions by the model using the parameters established in this study agreed well with the data measured under differents conditions tested. The resulting models explained the dynamic evolution of the main variables, in the liquid and gas phases.

Keywords

• modeling
• ADM1
• inhibition
• rate-limiting step
• waste activity sludge
• UASFB