Anaerobic Co-Digestion of Food Waste and Thermal Pretreated Waste Activated Sludge: Synergetic Effect and Energy Assessment

Thermal pretreatment was an effective method to improve the anaerobic digestion of waste activated sludge. However its application in China was still hindered by the high energy demand. In order to balance the energy consumption of sludge thermal pretreatment integrated with anaerobic digestion, food waste was introduced as co-substrate to achieve an energy self-sustainable sludge treatment system. Anaerobic biodegradability test was performed using thermal pretreated sludge and food waste in order to clarify the kinetics and mechanism of co-digestion, especially the synergetic effect on specific methane yield. The prominent synergetic effect was an initial acceleration of cumulative methane production by 20.7- 23.8% observed during the first 15 days, and the cumulative methane production of feedstock can be calculated proportionately from its composition. Between the evaluated models, modified Gompertz model presented a better agreement of the experimental results and it was able to describe the synergetic effect, assessed by the relative deviation between theoretical estimation and the experimental results of co-digestion tests. This feature made modified Gompertz model a suitable tool for methane production prediction of mono- and co-digestion. Energy assessment shown that co-digestion with food waste was a sustainable solution to maintain the integration of thermal pretreatment and anaerobic digestion energy neutral or even positive. Besides, the performance of sludge dewatering was a crucial factor for the energy balance.