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Kinetics of anaerobic degestion of cow manure with biomass immobilized on zeolite

1994; Elsevier BV; Volume: 54; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/0923-0467(93)06048-u

1873-3220

R. Borja, E. Sánchez, Peter Weiland, L. Travieso, A. Martı́n,

Water-Energy-Food Nexus Studies

This papar describes a kinetic study of anaerobic digestion of cow manure (chemical oxygen demand (COD)  47.1 g 1−1), a process usually inhibited due to the presence of complex organic compounds and high concentrations of ammoniacal nitrogen. Two fluidized bed reactors were used for the study, one with freely suspended biomass as a control, and the other with biomass supported on zeolite. The results obtained are evaluated using the Chen-Hashimoto methane production model to obtain values for the maximum specific growth rate μmax and kinetic constant K of the process for each case studied. Use of the support produced a 59% and 35% increase in the values of these parameters, respectively. This behaviour is believed to be due to the exchange of ammoniacal nitrogen that occurs in this type of digester between the support and the medium. Anaerobic digestion is shown to be a useful method for purifying the wastewater in question since this method results in a 93%–94% reduction of the initial COD, leaving a final COD of between 2.7 and 3.0 g 1−1.