Composting anaerobic digestate

The interest in organic waste treatment has increased a lot in the recent years. Among the treatment technologies, anaerobic digestion (AD) has gained a significant role in municipal solid waste management due to its energy recovery benefits. Digestate is the solid material produced from the biodegradation of organic waste during anaerobic digestion process. Management of a high volume of digestate is one of the challenges in AD technology. The digestate can be mixed with the organic waste and then applied to the composting process. Co-composting of digestate with organic waste can shorten the composting times. However, the digestate: fresh organics ratio and the digestate stability are the two critical parameters that should be determined when applying anaerobic and aerobic processes sequentially. The main objective of this study is to identify the digestate effects on composting facility by determining its optimum amount and stability when co-composting with fresh organic waste.
This project helps organics processing system at Waste Management Services to optimize its current process. By improving the rate of composting, the composting capacity throughput could be increased and energy requirements for aeration during the composting process will be also decreased, dramatically.

Faculty Supervisor:

Daryl McCartney

Student:

Partner:

Edmonton Waste Management Centre of Excellence

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Administrative and support, waste management and remediation services

University:

University of Alberta

Program: