Simple and rapid method to estimate biokinetics design constants, biochemical methane (BMP) and hydrogen (BHP) potential of leather fleshing co-digested with MSW
Shanmugam, P. and Horan N.J., The University of Leeds, UK
(free)
The anaerobic co-digestion technology has allured the attention of solid waste managers and engineers to fulfil ROC and LATS norms for UK. However, there is no standard method exists to investigate the biokinetics design constants and the compliance of residual methane potential of digestate, liquors and solid wastes. The WRAP has recently envisaged a proposal to standardise the BMP method as compliance for PAS110. The advancement of AD requires proper techniques for prefeasibility study on configuring the digesters with standardised kinetic design constants. The ultimate BOD or COD and VSS are traditionally used to estimate the biokinetics design constants for liquid wastes AD, which can not be applied for solid wastes AD as one can not differentiate the disintegrated suspended solids and biomass in a solid waste digester. Therefore this paper demonstrated a method to estimate the biokinetic design constants biochemical methane (BMP), and hydrogen (BHP) potential of solid wastes in the hydrogenic and methanogenic completely stirred tank digesters (CSTD) in university of Leeds by the bioenergy research team led by Dr.Nigel Horan using the empirical formula of solid wastes and adenosine tri phosphate (ATP) measurement. The important biokinetic design constants derived are yield coefficient (Y as mg VSSe/mg CODe), specific growth rate (, half velocity constant (Ks), reaction rate constant (k), and endogenous decay coefficient (kd). These constants can thus be used to estimate the volume of the digester required, sludge age, biomass level in the digester etc., paving a path for the future design of solid waste AD.
Key Words: Bio-Kinetics, adenosine tri phosphate, Empirical formula, Bio-chemical methane potential, stoichiometric
