[Digestion] Digestion of Honey Waste

[Duncan Martin]

Replying to gfosterreid...

I have never tried a textile support but I see no reason why a textile would
not work, provided the fibre is inorganic - anything organic would
biodegrade in time - and dimensionally stable, so that flow channels stay
open. One could imagine a number of different configurations.

The potential for internal growth depends on (a) what you mean by internal
and (b) how the fibre is configured. There would be no growth within a
polymer monofilament but there would in the interstices of, say, a length of
yarn or a panel of cloth spun or woven from same. Growth might occur within
hollow fibres - but only if there was some way for an inoculum to get in.
(There are parallels here with the use of hollow-fibre ultra-filtration
units as the basis for an attached-growth bioreactor.)

I am not so sure there would be an effective increase in *active* biomass
per unit volume, however, even in *anaerobic* conditions. Do you have any
data? My guess is that metabolism in the interstitial growth would be
severely limited by mass-transfer rates once the biomass film is well grown.
(In simple language, the bugs at the surface would eat all the food and keep
growing, while those beneath would merely survive, on a 'starvation' diet.)

In *aerobic *conditions, I think it's even less likely that there would be
an effective increase in *active* biomass per unit volume, because oxygen
transfer rates *often* limit the rate of metabolism in the deeper zones of a
biomass film.

One advantage of a textile substrate, however, might be quick recovery from
a process upset causing loss of the biomass film. Any surviving interstitial
growth would provide a well-adapted, well-distributed inoculum, enabling
faster regrowth of an adequate biomass film.

It's an interesting idea. More info would be interesting.

Duncan Martin
Cloughjordan Ecovillage
Ireland
www.thevillage.ie




On 16 February 2011 13:25, <gfosterreid at gmail.com> wrote:

> Duncan,
> I know of a design for a aerobic recirculating filter bed system that uses
> a porous textile.  In this setup, the bacteria adhere to the external AND
> internal surfaces - making for a much smaller treatment unit.  Would this
> work here?
>
> Sent from my BlackBerry® device from Digicel
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Duncan Martin <duncanjmartin at gmail.com>
> Sender: digestion-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
> Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 10:08:30
> To: For Discussion of Anaerobic Digestion<
> digestion at lists.bioenergylists.org>
> Reply-To: For Discussion of Anaerobic Digestion
>        <digestion at lists.bioenergylists.org>
> Subject: Re: [Digestion] Digestion of Honey Waste
>
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