BACKGROUND Anaerobic digestate is the effluent from anaerobic digestion of organic wastes. It contains a significant amount of nutrients and lignocellulosic materials, even though anaerobic digestion consumed a large portion of organic matters in the wastes. Utilizing the nutrients and lignocellulosic materials in the digestate is critical to significantly improve efficiency of anaerobic digest...

Vermicomposting is an established process to convert organic wastes into vermicastings suitable for plant growth. This research investigated the vermicomposting of anaerobic digestate with four different ratios of sawdust as a bulking material, for 75 days. The optimum proportion of anaerobic digestate to sawdust was identified as 70:30 based on worm growth and reproduction. Vermicomposting pro...

Microbial Fuel cells (MFCs) have been proposed for nutrient removal and energy recovery from different wastes. In this study the anaerobic digestate was used to feed H-type MFC reactors, one with a graphite anode preconditioned with Geobacter sulfurreducens and the other with an unconditioned graphite anode. The data demonstrate that the digestate acts as a carbon source, and even in the absenc...

Anaerobic digestion is a process in which microorganisms degrade organic material, such as dairy manure, in the absence of oxygen to produce biogas and digestate. Biogas is composed mostly of methane, which is the main constituent of natural gas (Table 1). Digestate is the degraded organic material that exits the digester after the digestion process. Digestate contains nutrients that can be use...

Anaerobic digestion (AD) of putrescible urban waste for energy recovery has seen rapid growth over recent years. In order to ascertain its systems scale sustainability, however, determination of the environmental fate of the large volume of digestate generated during the process is indispensable. This paper evaluates the environmental burdens to air associated with land applied food-based diges...

CompAretti, A., p. Febo, C. GreCo and S. orlAndo, 2013. Current state and future of biogas and digestate production. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 19: 1-14 Over the past few years, the worldwide cost of energy has increased significantly, due to a growing global demand for energy and the decreasing availability of fossil fuel sources. Many countries are adopting environmental policies promoting the pro...

This research was aimed at assessing the fertilizer quality and public health implications of using digestate biofertilizer from the anaerobic digestion of food wastes and human excreta. Twelve (12) kg of food wastes and 3kg of human excreta were mixed with water in a 1:1 w/v to make 30-l slurry that was fed into the anaerobic digester to ferment for 60days at mesophilic temperature (22-31°C). ...

In anaerobic digestion (AD), long-chain fatty acids (LCFAs) produced by hydrolysis of lipids, exhibit toxicity against microorganisms when their concentration exceeds several millimolar. An absorption detection system using a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) was developed to monitor the LCFA concentration during an anaerobic digester’s operation treating oily organic waste. The dissociation of...

This paper presents a tool for the analysis of conversion of organic waste into energy. The tool is a program that uses waste characterization parameters and mass flow rates at each stage of the waste treatment process to predict the given products. The specific waste treatment process analysed in this paper is anaerobic digestion. The different waste treatment stages of the anaerobic digestion...

Introduction Over the past several years there has been significant interest in adopting on-farm manure anaerobic digesters in Ontario. The potential for sustainable energy production, while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, mitigating pathogens and odours, and increasing ionized nutrients in the digestate, has made anaerobic digestion an attractive option for manure management. The biog...