Mitigation of Volatile Fatty Acid Build-Up by the Use of Soft Carbon Felt Electrodes: Evaluation of Anaerobic Digestion in Acidic Conditions

Moreno, Rubén Martínez; Martínez, Elia Judith; Escapa, Adrián; Martı́nez, O.; Díez-Antolínez, Rebeca; Gómez, Xiomar

doi:10.3390/fermentation4010002

Cited by 28 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…This increment was explained by the electron contribution from the microbial electrolysis system. Moreno et al [111] also described increments in VFA degradation due to the presence of soft carbon felt electrodes, evidencing the beneficial effect of conductive materials.…”

Section: Increasing Reactor Productivity By the Increase In Solid Content And Temperaturementioning

confidence: 94%

Biogas Production from Organic Wastes: Integrating Concepts of Circular Economy

Ellacuriaga

García-Cascallana

Gómez

2021

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Anaerobic digestion is traditionally used for treating organic materials. This allows the valorization of biogas and recycling of nutrients thanks to the land application of digestates. However, although this technology offers a multitude of advantages, it is still far from playing a relevant role in the energy market and from having significant participation in decarbonizing the economy. Biogas can be submitted to upgrading processes to reach methane content close to that of natural gas and therefore be compatible with many of its industrial applications. However, the high installation and operating costs of these treatment plants are the main constraints for the application of this technology in many countries. There is an urgent need of increasing reactor productivity, biogas yields, and operating at greater throughput without compromising digestion stability. Working at organic solid contents greater than 20% and enhancing hydrolysis and biogas yields to allow retention times to be around 15 days would lead to a significant decrease in reactor volume and therefore in initial capital investments. Anaerobic digestion should be considered as one of the key components in a new economy model characterized by an increase in the degree of circularity. The present manuscript reviews the digestion process analyzing the main parameters associated with digestion performance. The novelty of this manuscript is based on the link established between operating reactor conditions, optimizing treatment capacity, and reducing operating costs that would lead to unlocking the potential of biogas to promote bioenergy production, sustainable agronomic practices, and the integration of this technology into the energy grid.

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Section: Increasing Reactor Productivity By the Increase In Solid Content And Temperaturementioning

confidence: 94%

Biogas Production from Organic Wastes: Integrating Concepts of Circular Economy

Ellacuriaga

García-Cascallana

Gómez

2021

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“…Nevertheless, this uncontrolled practice may have environmental problems, such as groundwater contamination due to infiltration, or greenhouse gas emissions [11]. Furthermore, lignocellulosic agroindustrial wastes and by-products lack of some macro and micronutrients [12,13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cheng and Zhong [23] have demonstrated that the use of swine manure as a co-substrate helps to neutralize the high VFAs concentration released by cotton stalk, emphasizing advantages related to the high buffer capacity provided by swine manure. Other authors have used a different strategy to minimize the acidification by VFAs in a biological process, by adding some micronutrients [12,13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Insights into Anaerobic Co-Digestion of Lignocellulosic Biomass (Sugar Beet By-Products) and Animal Manure in Long-Term Semi-Continuous Assays

et al. 2020

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Biogas production through anaerobic digestion has proven to be one of the most important pillars of the transition into the circular economy concept, a sustainable approach for biorefinery. This work aims to extend and improve knowledge in the anaerobic co-digestion of complementary substrates, given insights into wastes biodegradability and the influence of manure composition on the anaerobic process stability. Anaerobic co-digestion of sugar beet by-products with two kinds of animal manure (pig and cow) was investigated in semi-continuous assays, analyzing both common and non-classical parameters. Co-digestion with manure clearly mitigated the inhibitory effect of volatile fatty acids at high organic loading rates, leading to increases in methane production by 70% and 31% in comparison with individual digestion of sugar beet by-products, for co-digestion with pig and cow manure, respectively. Non-classical parameters could give more insight into the coupling/uncoupling of the anaerobic digestion phases and the involved microorganisms. Indirect parameters indicated that the process failure at the critical organic loading rates was mainly due to methanogenesis inhibition in the co-digestion with pig manure, while in co-digestion with cow manure or in individual digestion of sugar beet by-products, both hydrolysis–acidogenesis and methanogenesis phases were affected. Biomethanation degree refers to the maximum methane potential of organic wastes. Sugar beet by-products required a long digestion-time to reach high biodegradability. However, short digestion-times for co-digestion assays led to a high biomethanation degree.

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“…Fruit and vegetable wastes have high content of saccharides and disaccharides that are easily degradable by anaerobic microorganisms forming volatile fatty acids (VFAs) as intermediaries. When carbohydrates represent a large proportion of the feeding stream, a suppression of methanogenesis may be experienced with the overloading of the digester due to an initial VFA build-up leading to a decrease in reactor liqueur pH [ 48 ]. This VFA imbalance may negatively affect the production rate of biogas.…”

Section: The Effect Of Substrate Composition and Digestion Performmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anaerobic Digestion for Producing Renewable Energy—The Evolution of This Technology in a New Uncertain Scenario

Arenas

Pesantes

Carpio

et al. 2021

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Anaerobic digestion is a well-known technology with wide application in the treatment of high-strength organic wastes. The economic feasibility of this type of installation is usually attained thanks to the availability of fiscal incentives. In this review, an analysis of the different factors associated with this biological treatment and a description of alternatives available in literature for increasing performance of the process were provided. The possible integration of this process into a biorefinery as a way for producing energy and chemical products from the conversion of wastes and biomass also analyzed. The future outlook of anaerobic digestion will be closely linked to circular economy principles. Therefore, this technology should be properly integrated into any production system where energy can be recovered from organics. Digestion can play a major role in any transformation process where by-products need further stabilization or it can be the central core of any waste treatment process, modifying the current scheme by a concatenation of several activities with the aim of increasing the efficiency of the conversion. Thus, current plants dedicated to the treatment of wastewaters, animal manures, or food wastes can become specialized centers for producing bio-energy and green chemicals. However, high installation costs, feedstock dispersion and market distortions were recognized as the main parameters negatively affecting these alternatives.

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Mitigation of Volatile Fatty Acid Build-Up by the Use of Soft Carbon Felt Electrodes: Evaluation of Anaerobic Digestion in Acidic Conditions

Cited by 28 publications

References 42 publications

Biogas Production from Organic Wastes: Integrating Concepts of Circular Economy

Biogas Production from Organic Wastes: Integrating Concepts of Circular Economy

Insights into Anaerobic Co-Digestion of Lignocellulosic Biomass (Sugar Beet By-Products) and Animal Manure in Long-Term Semi-Continuous Assays

Anaerobic Digestion for Producing Renewable Energy—The Evolution of This Technology in a New Uncertain Scenario

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