Proceedings

Abstract

A waste- to- energy plant is described for the treatment of about 13 types of different organic substrates in co-digestion with a Two-stage anaerobic digestion process aiming to maximise the degradation into biogas and to assure complete stability to the process. The strategy for the doubling of the treatment capacity without any intervention on the lay-out is also described.

Keywords

Two-stage anaerobic digestion, waste to energy, stability, thermophilic

Introduction

It is already a well established knowledge that Anaerobic digestion is one of the most appropriate solutions (Malpei et al. 2007) to treat organic residues, since it’s able to get a value out of waste which is a biogas being a potential source of energy such as electrical, thermal or fuel, bringing in this way an added value to the waste management. A composting platform in the Region North of Paris decided to extend its possibilities of waste collection, by installing an anaerobic digestion plant. The major requirement for the anaerobic digestion plant was to be the most reliable, flexible and stable process since the ambition was to have the possibility to feed the plant with a huge number of different difficult substrates and moreover since the beginning the project was intended to be developed to allow to double the capacity of the plant without significant modifications of the original lay-out. Biomet® solution, a process developed by Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies Italia, has been retained as the most appropriate for the target.