Carbon dioxide stripping from anaerobic digestate of food waste using two types of aerators

Anaerobic digestate of organic wastes often contains high concentrations of ammonia and carbon dioxide. Ammonia can be removed from digestate by air stripping at elevated pH. However, it is difficult to increase pH of the digestate because dissolved carbon dioxide transforms into bicarbonate and carbonate ions. Thus, carbon dioxide in digestate needs to be removed to reduce alkali consumption in ammonia stripping process. This study aimed to optimize and compare the performances of diffused and packed tower aerators for anaerobic digestate of food waste. The diffused aerator removed 82.1% of dissolved carbon dioxide and 13.7% of total inorganic carbon, and increased pH of digestate from pH 7.87 to pH 8.53, under the following optimized conditions; digestate temperature of 45 °C, air flow rate of three volumes of air added to a unit volume of liquid per minute, aspect ratio of 2, agitation speed of 500 rpm with a turbine impeller, and retention time of 10 min. Operating conditions of the packed tower aerator were also optimized, and it was found that the packed tower aerator removed 15% and 44% less dissolved carbon dioxide and total inorganic carbon, respectively, than the diffused aerator. It was also found that overall coefficients of carbon dioxide mass transfer from liquid to gas phase determined the final pH of digestate and removal efficiencies of carbon species.