Ammonia and Acetic Acid Inhibitions in Anaerobic Digestion

Abstract

Anaerobic Digestion (AD) is an essential component in wastewater treatment to recover energy from waste and deals with sludge management issues effectively. AD is a treatment process that converts organic matter to methane and carbon dioxide with multi-step biological reactions. Methanogenesis, the subprocess of AD that produces methane, is an important indicator of the stability of AD and is influenced by pH, temperature, ammonia, volatile fatty acids (VFAs), and solids concentrations among other factors. Ammonia is an essential nutrient for methanogenic bacteria but at certain ammonia concentrations and pH levels, ammonia is said to be a toxicant for methanogenic archaea. Substrates that are high in ammonia content can include those high in protein, such as food waste, which can be inhibitory to methanogens in the digestion process. Thickened waste activated sludge (TWAS) also contains a large amount of nitrogen with its higher solids concentration, promoting methane production. VFAs are produced during acidogenesis and they can negatively affect methanogenic archaea. High organic loading rates into AD can lead to an accumulation of VFAs and thus inhibition of methanogenic activity. Even with well-known inhibitory effects of ammonia and VFAs on methanogenesis, there are limited tools available for modelling these inhibitions, especially when evaluating diverse compositions of substrate. The objectives of this research work are to experiment for various pairings of pH, ammonia, and acetate levels using batch reactors and to quantify the inhibition on the overall methane production using an AD-based model focused on biological reactions.