Treatment and valorization of anaerobic digestate

Download
2019
Ülgüdür, Nilüfer
Anaerobic digestion is a widely applied process for the stabilization and treatment of high-strength wastes. The process has two outputs, biogas and digestate. Even though biogas produced during the treatment is a renewable energy source and has positive impacts on improving the economics of the plant, the treatment and disposal of the digestates present a challenge. The treatment methods offered so far are either costly or low yielded which drives off these uneconomic and non-viable treatment processes from being solutions for digestate management. Digestates are still commonly applied on land as a fertilizer or soil conditioner. However, the land application of the digestate is exposed to several concerns regarding pollution, limited applicability and regulatory aspects. In this thesis study, a residual biogas potential (RBP) test was initially conducted on six digestate samples with the aim of developing a new approach for digestate management. The test indicated that significant biogas yields (0.111-0.326 Lbiogas/g VS) and total chemical oxygen demand (CODt) removal (21-84%) could be obtained from digestates in 70 days. The high-rate anaerobic treatment was then applied on the digestate having the highest residual biogas yield to reduce the time required to digest the residual organics. CODt was removed by 56-63% in 1.3-1.4 days of hydraulic retention time (HRT). A subsequent process of microalgal nutrient removal resulted in 92.7-93.7% of ammonium nitrogen and 95.6-97.8% of dissolved phosphorus reduction. The results were promising and verified the applicability of the high-rate anaerobic and microalgal nutrient removal processes for the digestate management.

Suggestions

Reactivation potential of indicator bacteria in anerobically digested sludges after dewatering processes
Erkan, Müge; Sanin, Faika Dilek; Özdağ, Hilal; Department of Biotechnology (2011)
Anaerobic digestion process which has long been known to successfully reduce the organic content of sludge is one of the most common alternatives to meet pathogen reduction requirements for particular classes of biosolids. However, it has recently been reported that, significantly higher densities of indicator bacteria have been measured in dewatered cake samples compared to samples collected right after anaerobic digestion. In addition, this increase in bacterial population has been commonly observed after...
Ozone treatment of excess biological sludge and xenobiotics removal
Muz, Melis; Gökçay, Celal Ferdi; Department of Environmental Engineering (2012)
A novel ozone-assisted aerobic sludge digestion process to stabilize and decrease the amount of excess sludge produced during biological treatment is presented in this study. Excess sludge production is a well known burden for the treatment plants both legally and financially. Moreover, with the arise in the knowledge in recalcitrant compounds it is understood that it can act as a significant secondary pollutant. With the developed pulse ozonation method, waste activated sludge samples from Ankara Tatlar an...
Effects of ultrasound pretreatment and anaerobic digestion on the energy potential of sludge
Çelebi, Emrehan Berkay; Sanin, Faika Dilek; Aksoy, Ayşegül; Department of Environmental Engineering (2015)
The by-product of wastewater treatment, sludge, is generated in tons everyday all around the world. As environmental regulations in Turkey are becoming stricter during the European Union adaptation period, the previously wide-spread disposal method of landfilling the sludge will not be applicable. Instead, dried sludge is expected to be used in revenue generating methods like land application or combustion. Combustion can be thought of as more beneficial as it uses sludge as an energy source. However, it is...
Investigation of activated sludge bioflocculation : influence of magnesium ions
Turtin, İpek; Sanin, Faika Dilek; Department of Environmental Engineering (2005)
Activated sludge systems are the most widely used biological wastewater treatment processes all over the world. The main working principles of an activated sludge system are the oxidation of biologically degradable wastes by microorganisms and the subsequent separation of the newly formed biomass from the treated effluent. Separation by settling is the most troublesome stage of an activated sludge process. A decrease in the efficiency of the separation of microbial biomass from the treated effluent causes a...
Integrated carbon dioxide mitigation and nutrient removal from municipal and industrial wastewater using microalgal systems
Kılıç, Gece Cansu; Bayramoğlu, Tuba Hande; Uludağ Demirer, Sibel; Department of Environmental Engineering (2017)
The aim of this master thesis study is to investigate the nutrient removal efficiency from different kinds of wastewaters and the carbon dioxide mitigation in photobioreactors with unialgal culture, Chlorella vulgaris. In the first part of the study, Chlorella vulgaris culture was cultivated in the Bold’s basal medium in batch reactors to increase the biomass content and to observe the growth phases of alga. Then, two parallel photobioreactors (PBRs) were run to cultivate Chlorella vulgaris culture semi-con...
Citation Formats
N. Ülgüdür, “Treatment and valorization of anaerobic digestate,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2019.