Anaerobic digestion in Europe: state-of-the-art 2008
Anaerobic digestion for the treatment of the organic fraction from municipal solid waste was developed more than 20 years ago and underwent rapid development since the mid-nineties.
It is expected that the installed capacity treating the organic fraction of household waste in Europe will exceed 5.200.000 ton by 2010. A geographical and technical analysis was made on the installed capacity. Due to the extended analysis-period (1990-2010), some clear trends can be observed.
In the beginning all plants were operating at mesophilic conditions but thermophilic digestion came in line in 1992 and 1993. The capacity of both applications increased significantly during the last two decades with mesophilic digestion being predominant.
Although wet and dry digestion has continued to increase in total capacity, dry digestion has been dominant since the beginning of the nineties. Dry anaerobic fermentation currently provides almost 54% of the installed capacity, while wet fermentation is used to digest 46% of the total volume which sums up in 2008 to 4.6 million tons annual capacity in around 160 plants.
The strong initial growth was mainly due to the rise of biowaste-plants up to 1997, but since the first digestion plant on residual waste was put into operation, there was a strong rise in the combination of centralized separation and biological treatment of residual household waste. However, the strong growth of capacity of Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT)-plants has stopped and since 2004 there is a steady-state in the cumulative percentage of biowaste and residual capacity installed. This is mainly due to the revamping or extension of existing biowaste composting plants.
Some state-of-the-art examples of AD-plants will be presented such as the MBT-facility in Hille (Germany) which yearly treats more than 25.000 tons of industrial waste, residual municipal waste and sludge. The produced biogas is used for production of steam and electricity and also as a support fuel to purify contaminated process air. Another good example is the facility in Bamberg (Germany) which treats a mixture of 80% biowaste and 20% maize silage in a horizontal plugflow-digester.
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