Proceedings

It has long been recognized that transporting sludges containing water is counter to the economical operation of a Waste Water Facility. It has also recently been determined that increasing the BOD load on an anaerobic digester enhances gas production. As a result, several cell disruption technologies, based on high shear and sonic pulses, have been tried but shown to be expensive and only marginally effective.

The information presented, regarding organism cell disruption, does not adequately explain the increases in gas production from cell lysis alone. This paper will present the advances to understanding enhanced gas production as it relates to the “Bug-Buster” Technology, a process that relies on relative solubilities of certain gases and their rates of diffusion through the sludge particles and organism cell walls.

KEY WORDS Aerobic, anaerobic, BOD, cell disruption, cell lysis, dewatering, digestion, particle size, sludge, bio energy, methane