Journal of Bioremediation & Biodegradation
Open Access

Review Article

Mathematical Modeling in Anaerobic Digestion (AD)

Liang Yu, Pierre Christian Wensel, Jingwei Ma and Shulin Chen*
Department of Biological Systems Engineering, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164, USA
Corresponding Author :	Shulin Chen Department of Biological Systems Engineering Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164, USA Tel:509-335-3743 Fax: 509-335-2722 E-mail: chens@wsu.edu
Received June 09, 2013; Accepted July 31, 2013; Published August 02, 2013
Citation: Yu L, Wensel PC, Ma J, Chen S (2013) Mathematical Modeling in Anaerobic Digestion (AD). J Bioremed Biodeg S4: 003. doi:10.4172/2155-6199.S4-003
Copyright: © 2013 Yu L, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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Anaerobic digestion (AD) of biowastes is the most conventional way to produce methane-rich biogas, which has great potential to replace the fossil fuel used in multiple applications, like vehicular transportation. Many countries and companies are involved in the design and construction of AD systems. Both efficient and economical AD performances are extremely important to promote worldwide adoption of this technology. Empirical methods have been traditionally used to scale up AD facilities, but these have required construction of expensive prototype systems and time-consuming studies. Alternatively, design and optimization of AD processes for biogas production can be enhanced via validated mathematical models developed from mechanistic studies that lead to a more indepth understanding of the very complex transport phenomena, microbial biochemical kinetics, and stochiometric relationships associated with AD. This paper provides a comprehensive literature review on the models available for AD processes.

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