Improvement of biomethane potential of sewage sludge anaerobic co-digestion by addition of “sherry-wine” distillery wastewater.

Abstract

Co-digestion of sewage sludge (SS) with other unusually treated residues has been reported as an efficient method to improve biomethane production. In this work, Sherry-wine distillery wastewater (SW-DW) has been proposed as co-substrate in order to increase biomethane production and as a breakthrough solution in the management of both types of waste. In order to achieve this goal, different SS:SW-DW mixtures were employed as substrates in Biomethane Potential (BMP) tests. The biodegradability and biomethane potential of each mixture was determined selecting the optimal co-substrate ratio. Results showed that the addition of SW-DW as a co-substrate improves the anaerobic digestion of SS in a proportionally way in terms of CODs and biomethane production The optimal co-substrates ratio was 50:50 of SS:SW-DW obtaining %VSremoval = 54.5%; YCH4 = 225.1 L CH4/kgsv or 154 L CH4/kgCODt and microbial population of 5.5 times higher than sole SS. In this case, %VSremoval = 48.1%; YCH4 = 183 L CH4/kgsv or 135 L CH4/kgCODt. The modified Gompertz equation was used for the kinetic modelling of biogas production with successful fitting results (r2 = 0.99). In this sense, at optimal conditions, the maximum productivity reached at an infinite digestion time was () = 229 ± 5.0 NL/kgSV; the specific constant was K = 25.0 ± 2.3 NL/kgSV·d and the lag phase time constant was (λ) = 2.49 ± 0.19.