Two-Stage Anaerobic Digestion of Source-Separated Organics and Municipal Sludges to Produce Renewable Bioenergy

A significant fraction of wet organic waste streams within typical municipalities include food wastes (collected by many as source separated organics), and sludges or biosolids. In Canada, such wastes are mostly going to landfill or being land applied to recover some nutrient value. Anaerobic digestion (AD) for disposal of organic waste is an attractive option to recover renewable bioenergy (as methane or hydrogen), with additional environmental benefits from preventing such wastes from going to the landfill. However, time needed to recover bioenergy conventional AD technology is large, which increases capital costs, making it uneconomical for most municipalities to recover this bioenergy. Greenfield has developed a high-rate AD (GHRAD) technology expected to reduce the time needed, and thus improve the economics of bioenergy recovery. This project will help improve and optimize the recovery of bioenergy from municipal source separated organics and municipal sludges using GHRAD technology, established at pilot-scale by Greenfield.

Faculty Supervisor:

Rajesh Seth;Nihar Biswas

Student:

Ashnabanu Jariwala;Ahmed Ayman

Partner:

Greenfield Global

Discipline:

Engineering - civil

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

University of Windsor