A pre-treatment technique for improving anaerobic digestion hydrolysis, to increase energy output by 20% and achieve 2x throughput

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Innovate UK
Innovate UK
Innovate UK
Innovate UK
Innovate UK

£343,565

July 31, 2018

July 31, 2019

"Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a well-established, renewable energy solution that plays a role in the supply and security of the UK's energy -- generating biogas fuel (methane & carbon dioxide) from organic waste (agricultural waste, food waste, wastewater etc). There are currently ~17,300 biogas and 460 biomethane AD plants in operation across Europe (European Biogas Association, 2015) -- with 523 of these in operation across the UK (EBA, 2016).

However, the first and last stages of anaerobic digestion (hydrolysis and methanogenesis) are severely rate-limiting and result in the current long throughput times of 30 days and low degradation rates of 50-70%. As a result, although the technique has been adopted widely throughout the agricultural and wastewater sectors, its cost-effectiveness is considerably hindered and AD processors often rely heavily on government subsidies in order to remain operational. However government subsidies (green energy subsidies and feed in tariffs) have been reducing dramatically over the past few years, in some cases by as much as 40% (Department of Energy & Climate Change, Jan 2017). Our novel concept will address the poor performance associated with the hydrolysis stage of anaerobic digestion in order to maximise energy output (more energy generated from renewable sources) and improve throughput time of feedstock in order to increase profitability of AD for the benefit of processors and UK society."