Anaerobic digestion of urban wastes: integration and benefits of a small-scale system

This work presents an integrated approach of anaerobic digestion (AD) at the urban scale, based on on-site collected wastes, experimentation in a pilot reactor, and model approach. To cope with urban waste limitations (season inflow, organic matter decrease, limited area), it was proposed a settlement of wastewater (WW), a drying of food waste (FW), and silage of green waste (GW). The results obtained highlight the performance of these pretreatments to concentrate and/or preserve the organic matter over time. Co-digestion in a 30-liter reactor was then successfully carried out, resulting in an 83% of volatile solids reduction and stable methane production of 321 ml CH₄/g VS_add, in 35 days. Finally, we developed a standard neighbourhood model with AD based on these experimental results. It appears that 66% of the primary sludge (PS) and 28% of the FWs produced daily could be treated by the proposal process. 14% of the annual production of GW could thus be processed daily. From an energetic point of view, the process generates a surplus of respectively, 2500 MJ/year and 38,000 MJ/year in terms of electricity and heat. The generation of 15 times more heat energy than electricity, supports an installation of anaerobic digestion, close to homes. Moreover, if these results are encouraging, we suggest different scenarios of co-digestion ratios and operational parameters for their optimization.