Anaerobic co-digestion of agricultural biomass with industrial wastewater for biogas production
Authors:   , Armah Edward Kwaku 
Published: August 2021

With the increasing demand for clean and affordable energy which is environmentally friendly, the use of renewable energy sources is a way for future energy generation. South Africa, like most countries in the world are over-dependent on the use of fossil fuels, prompting most current researchers to seek an affordable and reliable source of energy which is also,a focal point of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7. In past decades, the process of anaerobic digestion (AD) also referred to as monodigestion, has proven to be efficient with positive environmental benefits for biogas production for the purpose of generating electricity, combined heat and power. However, due to regional shortages, process instability and lower biogas yield, the concept of anaerobic co-digestion (AcoD) emerged to account for these drawbacks. Given the considerable impact that industrial wastewater (WW) could provide nutrients in anaerobic biodigesters, the results of this study could apprise decisionmakers and the government to further implement biogas installations as an alternative energy source. The study aims at optimising the biogas production through AcoD of the agricultural biomasses: sugarcane bagasse (SCB) and corn silage (CS) with industrial WW sourced from Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The study commenced with the characterisation of the biomasses under this study with proximate and ultimate analysis using the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), the thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA), the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and the differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The untreated biomass was subjected to biochemical methane potential (BMP) tests to optimise and predict the biogas potential for the selected biomass. A preliminary run was carried out with the agricultural biomass to determine which of the WW streams would yield the most biogas. Among the four WW streams sourced at this stage, two WW streams; sugar WW (SWW) and dairy WW (DWW) produced the highest volume of biogas in the increasing order; SWW ˃ DWW ˃ brewery WW > municipal WW. Therefore, both SWW and DWW were selected for further process optimisation with each biomass. Using the response surface methodology (RSM), the factors considered were temperature (25-55 °C) and organic loading rate (0.5-1.5 gVS/100mL); and the response was the biogas yield (m3 /kgVS). Maximum biogas yield and methane (CH4) content were found to be 5.0 m3 /kgVS and 79%, respectively, for the AcoD of CS with SWW. This established the association that existed among the set temperatures of the digestion process and the corresponding organic loading rate (OLR) of the AcoD process operating in batch mode. Both CS and SCB have been classified as lignocellulosic and thus, ionic liquid (IL) pretreatment was adapted in this study to ascertain their potential on the biogas yield. Results showed that the maximum biogas yield and CH4 content were found to be 3.9 m3 /kgVS and 87%, respectively, after IL pretreatment using 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate ([Emim][OAc]) for CS with DWW at 55°C and 1.0 gVS/100mL. The IL pretreatment yielded lower biogas but of higher purity of CH4 than the untreated biomass. Data obtained from the BMP tests for the untreated and pretreated biomasses were tested with the existing kinetic models; first order, dual pooled first order, Chen and Hashimoto and the modified Gompertz. The results showed that for both untreated and pretreated biomass, the modified Gompertz had the best fit amongst the four models tested with coefficient of correlation, R 2 values of 0.997 and 0.979, respectively. Comparatively, the modified Gompertz model could be the preferred model for the study of industrial WW when used as co-substrate during AcoD for biogas production. The study showed that higher biogas production and CH4 contents were observed when CS was employed as a reliable feedstock with maximum volume of the untreated and pretreated feedstock reported at 31 L and 20 L respectively.