Anaerobic Digestion Process: Converting Waste to Energy

Dear Colleagues,

Anaerobic digestion (AD) plays an important role in the conversion of organic waste where biogas has been produced as an end product of the digestion process. Different organic wastes, including animal waste, municipal waste, plant biomass such as agro-residue, weed, fruit and vegetable wastes, have been used as feedstock for biogas production. AD is one of the most widely used waste-to-energy techniques. There are thousands of large-scale and millions of small-scale AD systems currently in operation around the globe. AD technology is by far the single most important technology for treating organic waste and for providing clean renewable energy. AD technology has several benefits, such as generating renewable energy, remediating waste, and curtailing greenhouse gas emissions to improve health/hygiene and the overall socio-economic status of a given nation. Our dependence on rapidly depleting non-renewable energy sources has several irreparable consequences, including damage to economic development, national security, the local and global environment, climate change, and others. AD/biogas technology can provide sustainable, affordable, and environmentally friendly energy resources, utilizing biochemicals from renewable bioresources (e.g., energy crops, agri- and forest residues, organic wastes, high-strength wastewaters, etc.). In recent years, significant advances have been made in AD technology with an emphasis on the recovery of energy. Thus, this Special Issue, “Anaerobic Digestion Process: Converting Waste to Energy”, has been conceptualized to highlight some of these advances. We are especially interested in state-of-the-art critical reviews in the following areas:

• Resource recovery from organic waste;
• Pretreatment technologies;
• Anaerobic digestion and climate change mitigation;
• Microbial community analysis in AD systems;
• Anaerobic digestion process control, bioenergetics and modelling;
• Biogas upgrading and utilization;
• Anaerobic digestion biorefinery;
• Digestate utilization;
• Life cycle and techno-economic analysis;
• AD technology and policy.

Dr. Sagarika Panigrahi
Dr. Brajesh Kumar Dubey
Guest Editors

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