Use of physical and biological process models to understand the performance of tubular anaerobic digesters

• Swine waste was treated in a tubular anaerobic digester in rural Costa Rica.
• Digester performance was studied in terms of biogas production and effluent quality.
• Computational fluid dynamics model used to estimate a HRT of 23 days.
• Bioprocesses model estimated an average MCRTs of 115 days.

Tubular anaerobic digesters are used in developing countries to produce biogas from livestock waste. In this research, field measurements and physical and biological process modeling studies were used to investigate transport and transformation mechanisms for particulate and soluble organic matter in household-scale tubular digesters in the Monteverde region of Costa Rica. Greater than 75% removal of volatile solids and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5) were observed. The high effluent quality was attributed to the formation of a biologically active floccular sludge layer, which allowed for separation of hydraulic and mean cell residence times (HRT and MCRT). A reduced order transport model was developed and validated using field tracer study data. Key assumptions of the reduced order model were verified via computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. The mean HRT predicted by the reduced order model was 23 days and was in good agreement with the tracer experiment. A simplified floccular sludge biological process model was developed and used to estimate an average MCRT of 115 days. The results showed that household-scale tubular anaerobic digesters can provide enough biogas to meet households’ cooking energy needs, which was consistent with field results. This is the first study to combine mathematical modeling with field studies of tubular anaerobic digester performance.