Abstract

This paper is a practitioner’s guide to commissioning digesters – written by sewage treatment operators for sewage treatment operators. It is not intended to give all the science, it is a laypersons guide, intended to give practical advice based on many years’ experience of what has worked and what hasn’t worked. Commissioning of digesters can go very well and very smoothly if you know what you are doing; or can be a significant and very expensive mess if it goes wrong. This guide is aimed to help provide some practical guidance to keep the process on safe ground.

Keywords Commissioning, Anaerobic Digestion, Thermal Hydrolysis, Dewatering

1. Introduction

The objective of commissioning any digester is to build up the bug community within the digester with a full balance of robust and healthy digestion bugs so that the digest is then able to run at the design throughput. The more cost effectively this can be done the better.