Proceedings

In the paper presented at this conference last year uneconomic aspects of transporting sludges containing water in the operation of a Waste Water Facility were emphasised. It was further reported that increasing the BOD load on an anaerobic digester enhances gas production. Resulting from this, several cell disruption technologies were discussed based on high shear and sonic pulses, which have been tried but shown to be expensive and not wholly effective.

The information regarding organism cell disruption, presented last year, did not adequately explain the increases in gas production from cell lysis alone. This paper will present the advances made during the past year 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.

This paper also observes that the cause of foaming which is a problem in some digesters (irrespective of whether Bug Buster is used or not) can be controlled through correctly managing the SAS feed into the digester.

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