Energy Recovery and Treatment of Slaughterhouse Wastewater Using Anaerobic Digestion Coupled with Combined Chemical Electro Coagulation Technique

Wastewater treatment is an important option to reclaim treated water for countries that are facing water shortages. The availability of technical and financial factors influences the selection of treatment technology. Therefore, it is very important to choose the best-fit technology for the treatment of wastewater. The objective of this investigation was to optimize the anaerobic digestion for the treatment of slaughterhouse wastewater and to evaluate the bioenergy production potential, and chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiency of residual matter. The anaerobic digestion setup was combined with the electro-coagulation technique to enhance the process optimization and recovery of bioenergy from waste. The performance of the lab scale anaerobic digester was evaluated under mesophilic environmental conditions (29 ± 1.40°C). Experimentation showed the COD removal efficiencies and methane yield of lab scale treatment system in the ranges of 58.92 to 94.54% with the maximum volumetric production of 0.158 ± 0.17 m³/day. The proposed system is efficient enough to cater not only to the high-strength slaughter-house wastewater, but it will also act as a source of generating bioenergy. Consequently, combined processes are inferred to be superior to individual techniques, for the removal of both organic and inorganic compounds from slaughterhouse wastewater.