Author(s)

ELENA CRISTINA RADA, LUCA GIACOMINI

Abstract

Anaerobic digestion is a process used worldwide for the valorisation of a wide range of biomasses. Design and operation of the anaerobic reactor must be synergic to avoid loss of efficiency, often seen as biogas production lower than the expected. The present article deals with the treatment of discarded biomasses, mainly food waste but also animal byproducts, as the subject of the analysis is the resilience of anaerobic digestion plants in different contexts. The work proposes two kinds of indicators for the quantification of resilience: sustainable temporary organic overloading and tolerable temporary underproduction of biogas. In the first case, the organic overloading cannot be ‘steady’ for multiple reasons. In the second case, resilience of an anaerobic reactor cannot manage anomalies like feeding bones when the design did not consider this material; this can be an aspect more sensible with animal byproducts.

Keywords

anaerobic digestion, circular economy, design, management, plant, resilience