Instrumentation and control of anaerobic digestion processes: A review and some research challenges

Jimenez, J.; Latrille, E.; Harmand, J.; Robles, A.; Ferrer, J.; Gaida, D.; Wolf, C.; Mairet, F.; Bernard, O.; Alcaraz-Gonzalez, V.; Mendez-Acosta, H.; Zitomer, D.; Totzke, D.; Spanjers, H.; Jacobi, F.; Guwy, A.; Dinsdale, R.; Premier, G.; Mazhegrane, S.; Ruiz-Filippi, G.; Seco, A.; Ribeiro, T.; Pauss, A.; Steyer, J.P.

Instrumentation and control of anaerobic digestion processes: A review and some research challenges

Title

Instrumentation and control of anaerobic digestion processes: A review and some research challenges

Author

Jimenez, J.
Latrille, E.
Harmand, J.
Robles, A.
Ferrer, J.
Gaida, D.
Wolf, C.
Mairet, F.
Bernard, O.
Alcaraz-Gonzalez, V.
Mendez-Acosta, H.
Zitomer, D.
Totzke, D.
Spanjers, H.
Jacobi, F.
Guwy, A.
Dinsdale, R.
Premier, G.
Mazhegrane, S.
Ruiz-Filippi, G.
Seco, A.
Ribeiro, T.
Pauss, A.
Steyer, J.P.

Faculty

Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Department

Water Management

Date

2015-10-22

Abstract

To enhance energy production from methane or resource recovery from digestate, anaerobic digestion processes require advanced instrumentation and control tools. Over the years, research on these topics has evolved and followed the main fields of application of anaerobic digestion processes: from municipal sewage sludge to liquid—mainly industrial—then municipal organic fraction of solid waste and agricultural residues. Time constants of the processes have also changed with respect to the treated waste from minutes or hours to weeks or months. Since fast closed loop control is needed for short time constant processes, human operator is now included in the loop when taking decisions to optimize anaerobic digestion plants dealing with complex solid waste over a long retention time. Control objectives have also moved from the regulation of key variables—measured on-line—to the prediction of overall process performance—based on global off-line measurements—to optimize the feeding of the processes. Additionally, the need for more accurate prediction of methane production and organic matter biodegradation has impacted the complexity of instrumentation and should include a more detailed characterization of the waste (e.g., biochemical fractions like proteins, lipids and carbohydrates) and their bioaccessibility and biodegradability characteristics. However, even if in the literature several methodologies have been developed to determine biodegradability based on organic matter characterization, only a few papers deal with bioaccessibility assessment. In this review, we emphasize the high potential of some promising techniques, such as spectral analysis, and we discuss issues that could appear in the near future concerning control of AD processes.

Subject

anaerobic digestion
organic matter
characterization
instrumentation
control
diagnosis

To reference this document use:

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:7f3f3050-7d55-444b-ae8c-f9e1923f75fc

Publisher

Springer

ISSN

1569-1705

Source

Reviews in Environmental Science and Biotechnology, 14 (4), 2015

Part of collection

Institutional Repository