Investigating the Effect of Commercial and Synthesized Fe^0 particles on Methane Production Through the Anaerobic Digestion of Waste Sludge

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a well-established technology that converts organic wastes to produce renewable energy as methane gas. However, the low conversion efficiency of organic matter to methane gas is the main challenge for the practical application of this technology. Therefore, this article aims to demonstrate the effect of the addition of commercial and synthesized Fe0 particles on methane gas production during the AD of waste sludge. Two set of experiments were conducted using two different waste sludges collected at different times from Fukuoka wastewater treatment plant in Japan. Different concentrations of commercial and synthesized iron particles were used in the anaerobic digesters ranged from 1 to 500 mg/L. The results should that the addition of the synthesized/Fe^0 particles to the anaerobic digesters improved methane production by 16% and 5% at using the first and second waste sludge, respectively. On the other hand, the addition of the commercial iron particles did not improve the production of methane gas.