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Pre-treatment of distillery spent wash (vinasse) with vortex based cavitation and its influence on biogas generation
Date
2020
Abstract
Distilleries generate high COD (chemical oxygen demand) wastewater streams that are anaerobically digested to produce biogas with sub-optimal yields. In this work, for the first time, novel vortex-based hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) pre-treatment of these waste streams was investigated for significantly enhancing biogas yields. Molasses spent wash (120,000 ppm COD, India) and vinasse (27,000 ppm COD, Brazil) were pre-treated at varying number of passes (between 1 and 20) through the HC device at constant inflow, biochemical methanation potential (BMP) was measured and described using a first order model. Vortex-based HC pre-treatment led to 14% enhancement (2 passes) in BMP from spent wash (difficult to digest compared to vinasse) with a net energy gain of 1 GJ/ton COD. 10–22% increase in biogas yields from large-scale industrial spent wash digesters confirmed the laboratory findings. The work presented is useful and can be translated to recalcitrant feedstock for enhancing valorization using vortex-based HC pre-treatment.
Supervisor
Description
peer-reviewed
The full text of this article will not be available in ULIR until the embargo expires on the 23/06/2021
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
Bioresource Technology Reports;11, article 100480
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Funding code
Funding Information
Innovate UK, Newton Fund, BBSRC, Department of Biotechnology, Government of India
Sustainable Development Goals
External Link
Type
Article
Rights
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/