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Different strategies can be used to enhance the biogas production: waste pretreatment, two-stage anaerobic digestion anaerobic co-digestion and bioaugmentation. The book covers the current developments in the area of enhancing biogas production.
List of contents
1. Fundamentals of anaerobic digestion. 2. Pretreatment of organic waste products. 3. Anaerobic co-digestion of waste/biomass. 4. Multi-stage anaerobic digestion. 5. Bioaugmentation. 6. Combined methods.
About the author
Agnieszka Montusiewicz, Ph.D., Sc.D. is an associate professor at the Faculty of Environmental Engineering of the Lublin University of Technology. She received her Ph.D. and postdoctoral degree in the technical sciences in the field of environmental engineering, which was supported by fourteen years of experience in designing and operating both municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plants. Her scientific interests focus mainly on the issues related to applications of hydrodynamic cavitation in wastewater treatment and pretreatment of organic waste to increase its biodegradability, as well as methods enhancing biogas production and novel methods of wastewater treatment. She is a co-author of technological solutions for full-scale facilities in the field of tannery wastewater treatment and multi-component co-digestion in WWTP. A measurable outcome of her research is the authorship or co-authorship of 3 books, 67 papers, 5 chapters in monographs and 5 patents.
Summary
The concern about using organic waste as a renewable energy source is a critical worldwide issue. In this area, anaerobic digestion (AD) seems to be a promising solution because of the significant reduction of waste quantity and generation of valuable products such as biogas, regarded as being a good energy carrier and digestate with high nutritional potential for agriculture. The current trends in AD focus on improving the efficiency of the process to make this a cost-effective treatment. Depending on the source (agricultural, municipal, or industrial), organic waste varies considering both its composition and structure, and thus the bioaccessibility and biodegradability.
Accordingly, materials rich in carbohydrates, proteins, and fats require different operational conditions to overcome technological problems and minimize the risk of disruption or failure of the anaerobic systems.
Different strategies can be used to enhance biogas production, including waste pretreatment (physical, chemical, physico-chemical, biological, and combined), two-stage AD (temperaturephased AD and two-phase AD), anaerobic co-digestion (two-substrate and multi-substrate systems), and bioaugmentation (with natural strains or specialized consortia of microorganisms and genetically modified microorganisms or their consortia). Some of them enhance its accessibility and digestibility, while others improve nutritional balance, metabolic properties, and operational factors, facilitating synergistic effect of microorganisms. This book covers the current developments in the area of enhancing biogas production.
