A Practical Approach for Biochemical Modeling in the CFD Evaluation of Novel Anaerobic Digester Concepts for Biogas Production

The detailed physics-based description of anaerobic digesters is characterized by their multiscale and multiphysics nature, with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations being the most comprehensive approach. In practice, difficulties in obtaining a detailed characterization of the involved bi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inProcesses Vol. 11; no. 10; p. 2851
Main Authors Miana, Mario, Santamaría, Ana Martínez, Carbajo, Jose B., Bengoechea, Cristina, García, Gorka, Izquierdo, Salvador
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.10.2023
Subjects
Anaerobic digestion
Anaerobic treatment
Analysis
Biochemistry
Biogas
Biomass energy
Chemical oxygen demand
Chemical reactions
Computational fluid dynamics
Computer software industry
Digesters
Economic growth
Energy
Fluid dynamics
Gases
Global temperature changes
Heat transfer
Mathematical models
Modelling
Optimization
Simulation
Sludge
Turbulence models
Wastewater treatment
Wineries
Wineries & vineyards
United States
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Summary:The detailed physics-based description of anaerobic digesters is characterized by their multiscale and multiphysics nature, with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations being the most comprehensive approach. In practice, difficulties in obtaining a detailed characterization of the involved biochemical reactions hinder its application in the design of novel reactor concepts, where all physics interplays in the reactor must be considered. To solve this limitation, a practical approach is introduced where a calibration step using actual process data was applied for the simplified biochemical reactions involved, allowing us to efficiently manage uncertainties arising when characterizing biochemical reactions with lab scale facilities. A complete CFD modeling approach is proposed for the anaerobic digestion of wastewater, including heat transfer and multiphasic flow. The proposed multiphase model was verified using reference data and, jointly with the biochemical modeling approach, applied to a lab-scale non-conventional anaerobic digester for winery wastewater treatment. The results showed qualitative improvement in predicting methane production when the diameter of the particles was reduced, since larger particles tend to move downwards. The biochemistry of the process could be simplified introducing a preexponential factor of 380 (kmol/m3)(1 – n)/s for each considered chemical reaction. In general, the proposed approach can be used to overcome limitations when using CFD to scale-up optimization of non-conventional reactors involving biochemical reactions.
ISSN:2227-9717
2227-9717
DOI:10.3390/pr11102851