Modelling of an Anaerobic Digester: Identification of the Main Parameters Influencing the Production of Methane Using the Sobol Method

Abstract

Anaerobic digestion is a promising method of organic waste valorisation, particularly for fish farm waste, which has experienced a high growth rate in recent years. The literature contains predictive mathematical models that have been developed by various authors, allowing the prediction of the composition of bio-gas production from organic waste. In general, Monod’s kinetic expression is the basis for describing the enzymatic reaction rates for anaerobic digestion. In this work, several parameters are taken into account, such as temperature, cell growth inhibition, and other operating parameters, and systems of differential equations coupling the kinetics and stoichiometry for bio-reactions are applied to better describe the dynamics. Because of the high number of initial parameters that need to be defined for the anaerobic digester, the use of this model requires significant resources and a long calculation time. For this reason, a global sensitivity analysis (GSA) is applied to this predictive model based on the Sobol index method, in order to identify the most influential key parameters and the interactions between them. For the digestion of fish waste, it is observed that the key parameters influencing methane production are the lipid concentration of the waste, temperature, and hydraulic retention time (HRT).