Anaerobic digestion: an engineered biological process

• Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a biological process where a variety of microorganisms are the key factors for transforming complex organic structure into biogas, a mixture of methane, carbon dioxide, and other trace gases. Linked to the production of biogas is also the unique possibility to utilize and recycle nutrients released during the digestion. This gives the AD-process a key role in the development of many biorefinery concepts supporting industrial symbiosis and circular economy. The overall process efficiency is linked to the microbial steps which are affected by regulating factors including the characteristic of the substrate and the engineered process layout, together with the targeted outputs (raw biogas, compressed/liquid biogas, fertilizer, and/or other refined products). Between the digestion steps, the hydrolysis, the first microbial step, is often the rate-limiting step in degradation of polymeric substrates. As such, securing efficient and cost-effective hydrolysis represents today the key to process complex biomasses not yet fully utilized within the AD despite its high methane potential.

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Maskinteknik -- Energiteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Mechanical Engineering -- Energy Engineering (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kap (subject category)