A pre-treatment technique for improving anaerobic digestion hydrolysis, to increase energy output by 20% and achieve 2x throughput

“厌氧消化（AD）是一种成熟的可再生能源解决方案，在英国能源的供应和安全方面发挥着重要作用——从有机废物（农业废物、食物废物、废水等）中产生沼气燃料（甲烷和二氧化碳）。目前，整个欧洲约有17,300个沼气和460个生物甲烷AD工厂在运行（欧洲沼气协会，2015年），其中523个在英国运行（EBA， 2016年）。然而，厌氧消化的第一和最后阶段（水解和产甲烷）严重限制了速率，导致目前30天的吞吐时间和50-70%的低降解率。因此，虽然该技术已在整个农业和废水部门广泛采用，但其成本效益却受到很大阻碍，而AD处理商往往严重依赖政府补贴才能维持运作。然而，政府补贴（绿色能源补贴和上网电价）在过去几年中大幅减少，在某些情况下减少了40%（能源与气候变化部，2017年1月）。我们的新概念将解决与厌氧消化水解阶段相关的不良性能，以最大限度地提高能量输出（更多来自可再生能源的能量），并改善原料的吞吐时间，以提高AD的盈利能力，造福加加工者和英国社会。”

"Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a well-established, renewable energy solution that plays a role in the supply and security of the UK's energy -- generating biogas fuel (methane & carbon dioxide) from organic waste (agricultural waste, food waste, wastewater etc). There are currently ~17,300 biogas and 460 biomethane AD plants in operation across Europe (European Biogas Association, 2015) -- with 523 of these in operation across the UK (EBA, 2016).However, the first and last stages of anaerobic digestion (hydrolysis and methanogenesis) are severely rate-limiting and result in the current long throughput times of 30 days and low degradation rates of 50-70%. As a result, although the technique has been adopted widely throughout the agricultural and wastewater sectors, its cost-effectiveness is considerably hindered and AD processors often rely heavily on government subsidies in order to remain operational. However government subsidies (green energy subsidies and feed in tariffs) have been reducing dramatically over the past few years, in some cases by as much as 40% (Department of Energy & Climate Change, Jan 2017). Our novel concept will address the poor performance associated with the hydrolysis stage of anaerobic digestion in order to maximise energy output (more energy generated from renewable sources) and improve throughput time of feedstock in order to increase profitability of AD for the benefit of processors and UK society."