The Influence of Low-Temperature Disintegration on the Co-Fermentation Process of Distillation Residue and Waste-Activated Sludge

Abstract

Innovative low-temperature disintegration (process temperature 55 °C and oxygen concentration 0.2 mg/dm3) can be an economically rational technology to intensifying energy production from renewable sources. The proposed process can achieve a degree of disintegration—under optimal conditions—of about 50%, which is excellent when compared with other methods of feed pre-treatment. The low-temperature disintegration of distillation residue and waste-activated sludge before the co-fermentation process increased biogas production by 30% and methane production by 65% (over a 26 d duration). The obtained results confirm that the low-temperature disintegration method can be effectively used to pre-prepare this type of feed. At the same time, it was discovered that the Gompertz model can be used to mathematically describe the biogas accumulation curves in the methane co-fermentation processes of the tested feeds (the correlation coefficients were higher than 0.98).