Application of the IWA Anaerobic Digestion Model (ADM1) for simulating full-scale anaerobic sewage sludge digestion

Abstract

A steady-state implementation of the IWA Anaerobic Digestion Model No. 1 (ADM1) has been applied to the anaerobic digesters in two wastewater treatment plants. The two plants have a wastewater treatment capacity of 76,000 and 820,000 m3/day, respectively, with approximately 12 and 205 dry metric tons sludge fed to digesters per day. The main purpose of this study is to compare the ADM1 model results with full-scale anaerobic digestion performance. For both plants, the prediction of the steady-state ADM1 implementation using the suggested physico-chemical and biochemical parameter values was able to reflect the results from the actual digester operations to a reasonable degree of accuracy on all parameters. The predicted total solids (TS) and volatile solids (VS) concentration in the digested biosolids, as well as the digester volatile solids destruction (VSD), biogas production and biogas yield are within 10% of the actual digester data. This study demonstrated that the ADM1 is a powerful tool for predicting the steady-state behaviour of anaerobic digesters treating sewage sludges. In addition, it showed that the use of a whole wastewater treatment plant simulator for fractionating the digester influent into the ADM1 input parameters was successful.

Modifying the ADM1 Model to Predict the Operation of an Anaerobic Digester Co-digesting Municipal Sludge with Bakery Waste

“…Usually it is a challenge to estimate the percentage of these parameters since most of the time sludge COD is not reported (Parker 2005). However, the IWA group does not provide clear information on how the fraction of carbohydrates, proteins and lipids can be divided for MS (Shang et al 2005). Sludge composition based on COD, may contain 35% inert, 20% proteins, 20% carbohydrates, and 25% lipids.…”

Extending the Applications of the ADM1 to Predict Performance of the Induced Bed Reactor (IBR) Co-Digesting Municipal Sludge with Bakery Waste

“…At any rate, the differential equations of the model are non-linear and it is complicated to optimize all the model's coefficient to predict well the process of the anaerobic digestion. Several studies have reported disagreement between the model and the observed data for continuous and semi continuous stirred reactors ( (Fezzani and Cheikh 2008;Parker 2005;Razaviarani and Buchanan 2015;Shang et al 2005).…”

Implementation of IWA anaerobic digestion model No. 1 (ADM1) for simulating the thermophilic anaerobic co-digestion of olive mill wastewater with olive mill solid waste in a semi-continuous tubular digester

“…These inconsistencies between simulations and experimental results were due to the identification difficulties and validity of all the most sensitive ADM1 parameters for different OLRs which were the major drawbacks for ADM1 applications. In fact, ADM1 differential equations were non linear equations and it was complicated to optimise all the sensitive parameters by adjusting ADM1 outputs with all main experimental results simultaneously without making some discrepancy by any parameters identification method as mentioned by previous researchers that have implemented the ADM1 with other wastes such as: Parker Wayne [11], who found several discrepancies between simulations and measurements; Shang et al [12] who found good agreement between ADM1 output and measured data but with a 10% over prediction of gas flow. Furthermore, some parameters such as gas transfer coefficient may correlate with reactor configuration [10] and other parameters such as hydrolysis constants may correlate with feed concentrations and HRTs but this dependency was not taken into account by the ADM1.…”

“…Besides, it can be used either as a common basis for further development or as a common platform for dynamic simulation for a variety of anaerobic processes. Afterwards, many implementations of this powerful tool have been tested and proved their success in simulating the anaerobic digestion of several organic wastes such as: industrial wastewaters [9]; sludge from wastewater treatment plants [10,11]; sewage sludge [12]; black water from vacuum toilet [13]; olive mill solid wastes [14]. However, the ADM1 has never been applied by any researcher to simulate the anaerobic digestion of OMW either alone nor mixed with other solid wastes and mainly OMSW.…”