The Ins and Outs of Anaerobic Digestion for a More Sustainable Future: Technological, Environmental and Economic Perspectives
Anaerobic digestion is gaining interest of the current situation of energy scarcity and availability. Therefore, it is expected that anaerobic digestion will have a key role in the framework of renewable energy, as it is obtained from organic waste, which is worldwide available and can be performed with different technologies. Although a consolidated technology and widely implemented at full scale, anaerobic digestion has room to improve, squeezing its potential in terms of energy production and digestate valorisation, among others. This Article Collection has the objective of compiling the latest research advances in the anaerobic digestion and co-digestion of organic waste of all origins. Technical, but also environmental and economic papers are also welcome.
The recent increase in the cost and scarcity of traditional energy sources has boosted the interest in renewable energy sources in the last decades. Among them, the anaerobic digestion of organic waste has gained especially interest among researchers, public administrations and private companies. The main advantages of anaerobic digestion are the worldwide availability of organic wastes and the low environmental impact of this technology when compared with other management strategies. In this context, technical advances, sustainability assessments or economic studies on anaerobic digestion are of main importance for the speeding of anaerobic digestion all over the world, thus consolidating this technology as an environmentally friendly technology for the production of renewable energy.
Subtopics of this Article Collection include, but not restricted to:
-
Microbiological studies
-
Inhibition of anaerobic digestion
-
Additives used in anaerobic digestion, especially nanomaterials
-
Biogas upgrading
-
Digestate valorisation and use
-
The integration of anaerobic digestion in biorefineries
-
Environmental assessment (including LCA)
-
Economics
All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection underwent desk assessment and peer-review as part of our standard editorial process. The Guest Advisors were not involved in peer-reviewing manuscripts unless they were an existing member of the Bioengineered Editorial Board.