Co-Digestion of Textile Treatment Sludge and Cow Dung for Improved Biogas and Methane Yield

Abstract

Textile industries produce a lot of sludge in the process of treating wastewater, which poses a problem in the disposal of such products as well as the environment. This paper investigated the possibility of creating biogas by anaerobic digestion of textile effluent treatment plant (ETP) sludge and evaluation of the capability of cow dung (CD) co-digestion to enhance the methane production. Laboratory batch digestion was performed at 30 days under mesophilic conditions (35±2°C) when five TS and CD mixing ratios were used. To measure the performance of conversion, biogas production, the concentration of methane, and the reduction of volatile solids were measured. Co-digestion resulted in the increase of process stability and the degradation of substrates, whereas textile sludge generated low levels of biogas and reduced amounts of methane. The highest cumulative biogas, methane percentage, and volatile solids reduction was recorded in the 50:50 CD: TS ratio. The research results highlight the fact that co-digestion is an appropriate method of enhancing the use of textile sludge in energy extraction.