Intensification of fermentation and anaerobic digestion processes for resource recovery from municipal wastes

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Resource recovery from waste has become a popular strategy for capturing of value added products and thus, interest and research are focused on technologies that can support these waste-to-value initiatives. Anaerobic digestion (AD) is the most widely used stabilization process for municipal sewage sludge. In addition to sludge reduction during AD, methane gas can be recovered. However, hydrolysis of particulate organics remains a significant challenge for conventional AD. Therefore, effective and economic pre-treatment techniques are required. on the other hand, volatile fatty acids (VFAs) that produced by dark fermentation have a high market demand as they are used extensively in the pharmaceutical, food, and chemical industries. The main challenge of VFAs production is recovering them from waste streams after it get produced. The main two objectives of this proposal are: (a) evaluate the effect of combined free nitrous acids and hydrogen peroxide pre-treatment on the anaerobic digestibility of thickened waste activated sludge, (b) investigate the feasibility of combining fermentation process with intensification by vacuum pressure.