Anaerobic biodegradation and disintegration under high-solids anaerobic digestion conditions
ISO 15985:2004 specifies a method for simulating an intensive anaerobic digestion process and determines the ultimate biodegradability and degree of disintegration of a test material under high-solids anaerobic digestion conditions.
The methanogenic inoculum is derived from anaerobic digesters operating on organic fraction of pretreated household waste. The test material is mixed with the inoculum and introduced into a static digestion vessel where it is intensively digested under optimum temperature and moisture conditions for a test period of 15 days or longer until a plateau in net biodegradation has been reached. The biogas production is continuously monitored in test and blank vessels to determine the cumulative biogas production. The percentage biodegradation is given by the ratio of the amount of biogas evolved from the test material to the maximum theoretical amount of biogas that can be produced from the test material. This percentage biodegradation does not include the amount of carbon converted to new cell biomass which is not metabolized in turn to biogas. The maximum theoretical amount of biogas produced is calculated from the measured total organic carbon.
Gas Endeavour® allows for continuous and on-line monitoring of released biogas (CH4 and CO2) under the test condition. The instrument is a fully integrated and automated system for sampling, analysing, recording, and generating reports. It is the perfect analytical tool that offers standardised measurement procedures, data interpretations and reports.
Read more about ISO 15985 at iso.org.
