Enhanced anaerobic digestion of swine manure via a coupled microbial electrolysis cell

Microbial electrolysis cell coupled anaerobic digestion (MEC-AD) is a new technology in energy recovery and waste treatment, which could be used to recycle swine manure. Here, different applied voltage effects were studied using MEC-AD with swine manure as a substrate. The maximum cumulative biogas and methane yields, both occurring with 0.9 V, were 547.3 mL/g total solid (TS) and 347.7 mL/g TS, respectively. The increased energy can counterbalance the electrical input. First order, logistic, gompertz, and back-propagation artificial neural network (BP-ANN) models were used to study cumulative biogas and methane yields. The BP-ANN model was superior to the other three models. The maximum degradation rate of hemicellulose, cellulose, and lignin was 60.97%, 48.59%, and 31.59% at 0.9 V, respectively. The BP-ANN model establishes a model for cumulative biogas and methane yields using MEC-AD. Thus, MEC-AD enhanced biogas and methane production and accelerated substrate degradation at a suitable voltage.