Improving methane production using hydrodynamic cavitation as pre-treatment

Abstract: To develop anaerobic digestion (AD), innovative solutions to increase methane yields in existing AD processes are needed. In particular, the adoption of low energy pre-treatments to enhance biomass biodegradability is needed to provide efficient digestion processes increasing profitability. To obtain these features, hydrodynamic cavitation has been evaluated as an innovative solutions for AD of waste activated sludge (WAS), food waste (FW), macro algae and grass, in comparison with steam explosion (high energy pre-treatment). The effect of these two pre-treatments on the substrates, e.g. particle size distribution, soluble chemical oxygen demand (sCOD), biochemical methane potential (BMP) and biodegradability rate, have been evaluated. After two minutes of hydrodynamic cavitation (8 bar), the mean fine particle size decreased from 489- 1344 nm to 277- 381 nm (≤77% reduction) depending of the biomasses. Similar impacts were observed after ten minutes of steam explosion (210 °C, 30 bar) with a reduction in particle size between 40% and 70% for all the substrates treated.  In terms of BMP value, hydrodynamic cavitation caused significant increment only within the A. nodosum showing a post treatment increment of 44% compared to the untreated value, while similar values were obtained before and after treatment within the other tested substrates. In contrast, steam explosion allowed an increment for all treated samples, A. nodosum (+86%), grass (14%) and S. latissima (4%). However, greater impacts where observed with hydrodynamic cavitation than steam explosion when comparing the kinetic constant K. Overall, hydrodynamic cavitation appeared an efficient pre-treatment for AD capable to compete with the traditional steam explosion in terms om kinetics and providing a more efficient energy balance (+14%) as well as methane yield for A. nodosum.