Dissolved methane in anaerobic effluent: Emission or recovery?

Abstract

Various anaerobic processes have been explored for the energy-efficient treatment of municipal wastewater. However, dissolved methane in anaerobic effluent appears to be a barrier towards the energy and carbon neutrality of wastewater treatment. Although several dissolved methane recovery methods have been developed, their engineering feasibility and economic viability have not yet been assessed in a holistic manner. In this perspective, we thus intend to offer additional insights into the cost-benefit of dissolved methane recovery against its emission.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Anaerobic treatment / Municipal wastewater / Dissolved methane / Methane recovery / Carbon emission

References

[1] Crone B C , Garland J L , Sorial G A , Vane L M . (2016). Significance of dissolved methane in effluents of anaerobically treated low strength wastewater and potential for recovery as an energy product: A review. Water Research, 104 : 520– 531

[2] Gu J , Xu G , Liu Y . (2017). An integrated AMBBR and IFAS-SBR process for municipal wastewater treatment towards enhanced energy recovery, reduced energy consumption and sludge production. Water Research, 110 : 262– 269

[3] Li X , Dutta A , Dong Q , Rollings-Scattergood S , Lee J . (2019). Dissolved methane harvesting using omniphobic membranes for anaerobically treated wastewaters. Environmental Science & Technology Letters, 6( 4): 228– 234

[4] Liu Y, Gu J, Zhang M (2019). AB processes: Towards Energy Self-sufficient Municipal Wastewater Treatment. London: IWA Publishing

[5] Liu Z H , Yin H , Dang Z , Liu Y . (2014). Dissolved methane: A hurdle for anaerobic treatment of municipal wastewater. Environmental Science & Technology, 48( 2): 889– 890

[6] Rongwong W , Goh K , Bae T H . (2018). Energy analysis and optimization of hollow fiber membrane contactors for recovery of dissolve methane from anaerobic membrane bioreactor effluent. Journal of Membrane Science, 554 : 184– 194

[7] U.S . Energy Information Administration ( 2020). How much carbon dioxide is produced per kilowatt-hour of U.S . electricity generation? Availiable onine at https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11

[8] Velasco P , Jegatheesan V , Thangavadivel K , Othman M , Zhang Y . (2021). A focused review on membrane contactors for the recovery of dissolved methane from anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) effluents. Chemosphere, 278 : 130448

[9] Zhang X , Gu J , Liu Y . (2022). Necessity of direct energy and ammonium recovery for carbon neutral municipal wastewater reclamation in an innovative anaerobic MBR-biochar adsorption-reverse osmosis process. Water Research, 211 : 118058

Open Access

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2022 The Author(s) . This article is published with open access at link.springer.com and journal.hep. com.cn