TY - JOUR
T1 - Pre-treatment of distillery spent wash (vinasse) with vortex based cavitation and its influence on biogas generation
AU - Nagarajan, Sanjay
AU - Ranade, Vivek Vinayak
N1 - M1 - 100480
PY - 2020/9/1
Y1 - 2020/9/1
N2 - Distilleries generate high COD (chemical oxygen demand) wastewater streams that are anaerobically digested to produce biogas with sub-optimal yields. In this work, for the first time, novel vortex-based hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) pre-treatment of these waste streams was investigated for significantly enhancing biogas yields. Molasses spent wash (120,000 ppm COD, India) and vinasse (27,000 ppm COD, Brazil) were pre-treated at varying number of passes (between 1 and 20) through the HC device at constant inflow, biochemical methanation potential (BMP) was measured and described using a first order model. Vortex-based HC pre-treatment led to 14% enhancement (2 passes) in BMP from spent wash (difficult to digest compared to vinasse) with a net energy gain of 1 GJ/ton COD. 10–22% increase in biogas yields from large-scale industrial spent wash digesters confirmed the laboratory findings. The work presented is useful and can be translated to recalcitrant feedstock for enhancing valorization using vortex-based HC pre-treatment.
AB - Distilleries generate high COD (chemical oxygen demand) wastewater streams that are anaerobically digested to produce biogas with sub-optimal yields. In this work, for the first time, novel vortex-based hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) pre-treatment of these waste streams was investigated for significantly enhancing biogas yields. Molasses spent wash (120,000 ppm COD, India) and vinasse (27,000 ppm COD, Brazil) were pre-treated at varying number of passes (between 1 and 20) through the HC device at constant inflow, biochemical methanation potential (BMP) was measured and described using a first order model. Vortex-based HC pre-treatment led to 14% enhancement (2 passes) in BMP from spent wash (difficult to digest compared to vinasse) with a net energy gain of 1 GJ/ton COD. 10–22% increase in biogas yields from large-scale industrial spent wash digesters confirmed the laboratory findings. The work presented is useful and can be translated to recalcitrant feedstock for enhancing valorization using vortex-based HC pre-treatment.
KW - Biomethane
KW - Energy gain
KW - Hydrodynamic cavitation
KW - Spent wash
KW - Vinasse
U2 - 10.1016/j.biteb.2020.100480
DO - 10.1016/j.biteb.2020.100480
M3 - Article
SN - 2589-014X
VL - 11
JO - Bioresource Technology Reports
JF - Bioresource Technology Reports
ER -