Research Into Design and Modeling of Anaerobic Digestion Process Applied to Municipal Solid Wastes

Anaerobic digestion (AD) potentially offers a much better option for management of the organic fraction of municipal solid wastes compared with landfill and incineration. AD not only harvests the organic carbon in the form of methane as bioenergy, but also makes it easier to recover and recycle the nutrients contained in the wastes. Additionally, AD system can be constructed near the source of the wastes, thus long distance trucking is eliminated resulting in lower transportation costs of the materials which typically has high water contents. Adoption of AD for municipal waste management however, relies on the development of new technologies that offers required reliability and efficiency at lowest possible costs. This presentation summarizes the research progress made at Washington State University in developing AD technologies with high solids contents aimed at addressing these challenges. Main topics cover (1) concept and test results of a new system design, (2) mixing strategy, (3) modeling and simulations of different feedstocks, and (4) comparison with other processes such as composting, landfill and incineration. The information represents some new developments in AD research and development related to municipal solid waste applications.