Stable, high-rate anaerobic digestion through vacuum stripping of digestate

This study coupled anaerobic digestion with vacuum stripping to achieve stable digestion at higher organic loading rates. Besides mitigation of ammonia inhibition, vacuum stripping of digestate improves solids solubilization and dewaterability due to vacuum-enhanced low-temperature thermal and mild-alkaline treatment under the vacuum stripping conditions (65 °C, 25–27 kPa, and pH 9). Batch vacuum stripping for 8 h removed 97.4–99.4% of ammonia, increased the dissolved fraction of volatile solids (VS) by 72.5%, and improved dewaterability with 30% decreases in time-to-filter and viscosity. The digesters having 2.9% of digestate replaced daily by vacuum stripped digestate were stable up to organic loading rate of 4.3 g-VS/L_reactor/d with biogas production at 3.15 L/L_reactor/d, while the digesters without stripping attained biogas production of 1.90 L/L_reactor/d at its highest stable organic loading rate of 2.5 g-VS/L_reactor/d. Acetoclastic Methanosaeta were the dominant methanogens, which became more resistant to ammonia stress in the digesters with vacuum stripping.