Ground-Truthing ADM1: Establishing Methodologies for Data Gathering in Anaerobic Digestion for Parameterization.

Growing global populations equate to increased human waste, water consumption and energy demands. Anaerobic digestion may serve as the solution to resolving the dilemma of a reliance on finite non-renewable energy resources (i.e., fossil fuels) and an inexhaustible source of human waste such as food waste, sewage, and agricultural by-products. Anaerobic digestion uses microorganisms to degrade waste and convert it into methane (biogas). The Anaerobic Digestion Model 1 (ADM1) was published in 2001 as a widely applicable tool to promote the utilisation of anaerobic digestion, however the ADM1 was created from a consolidation of data from numerous studies which may not have focused on the production of biogas. A methodology utilising the globally unique System-60 AD research facility in the Centre of Excellence for Anaerobic Digestion (CEAD) was developed for optimised data acquisition to improve ADM1 parameters, thereby allowing for the ground-truthing of ADM1.Methodologies include the use of a starved system and monitoring of gas production rates alongside hourly sampling for twenty four hours, samples analysis was conducted to observe concentrationsof fatty acid, chemical oxygen demand, total solids, and volatile solids percentage post inoculation. The protocol was conducted to investigate the effects of butyric, hexanoic, and octanoic acid inoculation on gas production in anaerobic digesters. Preliminary data gathered indicates that the methodology devised employing System-60 was successful in observing changes within an anaerobic digester, and improvements or modifications can be made for use of System-60 in future experimentation to investigate anaerobic digestion optimization and other projects focused on anaerobic digestion.