Fundamentals of Anaerobic Digestion of Wastewater Sludges

Abstract

This paper presents a literature review of anaerobic digestion of munidpal wastewater sludges. The paper focuses on the fundamentals of anaerobic digestion, setting forth a checklist for review of key process factors including: retention time, mixing, pH, temperature, nutrients, toxic materials, and feed characteristics. Major areas discussed are the microbiology and biochemistry of digestion, kinetics of digestion, environmental factors of concern, process performance indices, product stability, and laboratory and pilot studies on digestion. Although the text is aimed at digestion of municipal sludges, the fundamentals are sufficiently general to permit extrapolation to decomposition of other organics.