Continuous biomethanization of agrifood industry waste: A case study in Spain

• We present the results obtained by anaerobic digestion of some organic waste.
• The environmental benefits of anaerobic digestion are analyzed.
• Energetic potential of agrifood industries waste in Extremadura Spain is quantified.
• The results obtained prove that anaerobic digestion is economically profitable.

The anaerobic digestion technology is a biological treatment widely used to reduce the pollution load of wet waste biomass. In this work we present the results obtained by performing extensive experiments of anaerobic digestion of slaughterhouse waste, tomato industry waste and olive oil industry waste in continuous mode, which were designed to demonstrate that anaerobic digestion is an effective technology from an environmental and economic point of view.Biogas yields obtained are between 35.22 and 5.45 Nm3 biogas/m3 olive oil industry waste and tomato industry waste respectively and the slaughterhouse wastes achieve intermediate production, 30.86 Nm3 biogas/m3 municipal slaughterhouse waste and 22.53 Nm3 biogas/m3 Iberian pig slaughterhouse waste. Moreover, it possible to degrade between 63.46 and 75.3% of the initial organic matter.If these results are analyzed, the environmental, energetic economic benefits of anaerobic digestion can be quantified. Biomethanation of all these wastes generated annually in Extremadura could prevent the emission of 134,772 t of equivalent carbon dioxide, generate an energy similar to that provided by 2826 toe and reach payback times from 3.29 to 3.75 years for anaerobic digestion plant designed to treat the wastes generated by a medium-sized industry. So, we have fulfilled all the planned aims.