Mathematical modelling of anaerobic digestion of biomass and waste: Power and limitations

Abstract

Anaerobic digestion is an excellent technique for the energetic valorisation of various types of biomass including waste forms. Because of its complex nature, the optimisation and further process development of this technology go hand in hand with the availability of mathematical models for both simulation and control purposes. Over the years, the variety of mathematical models developed has increased as have their complexity. This paper reviews the trends in anaerobic digestion modelling, with the main focus on the current state of the art. The most significant simulation and control models are highlighted, and their effectiveness critically discussed. The importance of the availability of models that are less complex, which can be used for control purposes, is assessed. The paper concludes with a discussion on the inclusion of microbial community data in mathematical models, an innovative approach which could drastically improve model performance

Demand-Orientated Power Production from Biogas: Modeling and Simulations under Swedish Conditions

“…grass silage, cattle manure and agricultural substrates, [34][35][36][37] and has been modified and extended by a great number of research groups. [38][39][40][41][42] Several studies report good model performance. 42,43 A MATLAB script was developed to connect ADM1 to DyBiM, since the models needed different solvers.…”

Modeling the Two-Stage Anaerobic Digestion of Domestic Wastewater With the Development of a Monitoring Application

“…Nevertheless, most of the published studies refer to the treatment of high-strength wastewater (Blumensaat and Keller, 2005;Fezzani and Cheikh, 2008;Wichern et al, 2008;Chen et al, 2009;Dereli et al, 2010). For a comprehensive review regarding the current status of anaerobic digestion modeling, the reader is directed to the analysis made by Lauwers et al (2013).…”

“…Consequently, applications directly in the control system of a treatment plant are hard to achieve. This can be seen as a disadvantage since the use of mathematical modeling not only for simulation but also for control purposes is related to the further optimization of anaerobic digestion technology (Lauwers et al, 2013). A modeling application able to provide an integral view of the processes beforehand can help to improve the plant performance.…”

Bioenergy, material, and nutrients recovery from household waste: Advanced material, substance, energy, and cost flow analysis of a waste refinery process

“…Among the others, mathematical optimization modeling was applied to evaluate potential performances and limitations of waste-and biomass-to-energy systems (both thermal and biological) [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] and also to evaluate potential optimal solutions for maximizing energy and environmental savings in wastewater treatment [24,25], industrial production [26][27][28] and waste management strategies [29][30][31].…”