Comparison of anaerobic digesters performance treating palmitic, stearic and oleic acid: determination of the LCFA kinetic constants using ADM1

In this work, the process performance of three parallel anaerobic digesters was evaluated while treating emulsified long-chain fatty acids (LCFA) (i.e., palmitic, stearic and oleic acid) at two different organic loading rates (OLR) (2 and 4 g L −1 day −1 ). The digester treating palmitic acid achieved a biogas yield of 0.42 ± 0.05 L g −1 COD with a digester effluent COD of 2.3 ± 0.4 g L −1 and VFA concentrations below 250 mg L −1 . Stearic acid showed lower biogas yield values (0.34 ± 0.05 L g −1 COD) with low effluent COD (2.5 ± 0.4 g L −1 ) and VFA concentrations (