Micro-Aerobic Digestion for Advanced Process Stability and Biogas Desulfurization

Many traditional anaerobic digesters can benefit from a facelift that maximizes biogas production and enhancing process stability without major infrastructure modification. Moreover, a simple method to limit H₂S in the biogas without expensive gas conditioning would all contribute to the sustainability and economic efficiency of the energy recovery process as operated at many water resource recovery facilities. Micro-aeration can provide this facelift without major infrastructure modification. Micro-aerobic digestion is a relatively new process-integrated technology that may be defined as the trace consumption of oxygen with zero concentration of oxygen present in the sludge. Micro-aeration has been researched and applied for biogas desulfurization with H₂S removal efficiency of more than 80% in most cases. Moreover, Micro-aeration has shown to improve the degradability of the feedstock and enhance the methane production in cases with high loading rates, while it can enrich the diversity of the microbial community improving process stability.