Process Safety and Environmental Protection, Vol.102, 495-502, 2016
Start-up of dry anaerobic digestion system for processing solid poultry litter using adapted liquid inoculum
The objective is to obtain the basic design criteria for starting up dry anaerobic-digestion (DAD) systems treating solid-poultry-litter (PL) with hay-bedding (TSmixture: 68.6%) using adapted liquid inoculum. Effect of organic loading rates (OLR) and mode of operation (particularly psychrophilic liquid inoculum recirculation-percolation mode) were evaluated in two phases; such that OLR of 5.4 and 21.6 gVS/kg(inoculum)VS/d were maintained respectively for Phase-1 and-2; and top-down and down-up mode of liquid-inoculum recirculation into DAD-system were experimented. Digesters were operated at psychrophilic-temperature (@20 degrees C) with cycle length of 26 and 38 d for Phase-1 and-2, respectively. Results show that specific methane yield of 0.147-0.162 L/gVS(fed) was obtained for Phase-1 with a methane content of 35-39%; whereas Phase-2 had 61-70% lower yields compared to Phase-1. Though PL-digestion was possible at OLR <5.4g VS/kg(inoculum)VS/d, high nitrogen-content in PL inhibited the digestion process especially at higher OLR. However, adapted inoculum to TKN of >20 g/L could minimize the inhibition. Top-down-recirculation is recommended for simpler operation. Crown Copyright (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of The Institution of Chemical Engineers. All rights reserved.