Process Boundary Conditions With Advanced Anaerobic Digestion For Municipal Sludge Digestion

Federal regulations and economic drivers have stimulated the development and full scale application of advanced anaerobic digestion processes (AADPs), as new facilities or as upgrades of existing solids handling systems. As more experience is gained with these processes, municipalities seeking greater economies and performance in their solids management systems will turn to an AADP for new anaerobic digestion systems.As popular interest increases, much is unknown at present about the performance, operating and maintenance characteristics of AADPs. This basic knowledge is needed for informed decision-making leading to AADP selection for a specific application. At this conference a number of contributions will be made to the technical knowledge about AADPs, but will the information be in a form useful to those who need it? This paper suggests an approach to organizing the information in a consistent manner, using a tool called process boundary conditions to map and compare the performance of the many AADPs now of interest.