Pretreatment methods as a means of boosting methane production from sewage sludge and its mixtures with grease trap sludge

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to determine the applicability of the selected pretreatment methods as a means of intensification of methane production from sewage sludge as well as its mixtures with grease trap sludge. The addition of the fat rich material to the digester treating sewage sludge resulted in an increased methane yield as well as volatile solids (VS) removal of up to 36% (from 134.75 mL/g VS to 182.84 mL/g VS). Furthermore, thermochemical pretreatment of the co-digestion mixture resulted in an approximately 76% higher methane yield as compared to the untreated sewage sludge. The energy balance showed that, for both materials ultrasonic pretreatment and thermochemical pretreatment has an energy self-sufficiency. All of the tested models fit the experimental data with coefficients of determination higher than 0.96.