Within Northern Ireland, a potential feedstock for anaerobic digestion is processing waste from the

dairy industry. Wastes from the dairy industry producing milk, cheese, casein and youghurt are
largely comprised of whey which is a liquid residue. Whey makes up approximately 80 – 90% the
volume of milk entering the process and contains about 50% of the nutrients in the original milk. [1]
The wastes tend to be homogenous and according to ABPR, they are a category 2 waste which
requires no pre-treatment. Organic waste from the dairy processing industries contains
approximately 75-80% lactose and 20-25% protein. Therefore, being rich in proteins and sugars, they
are easily digestible. [2]Digestibility is a main parameter as it has a direct association with the
production of methane. Milk wastes have a very rapid conversion of substrate to methane, for
example, 80% of the ultimate methane yield was achieved after a brief period of 3-8 days. The
Methane yield was in the range of 458-714 m3 tonne -1 VS -1. [3] There are some potential inhibitions
with processing dairy waste. With the protein content in the waste, this may result in foaming which
may result in inefficient gas recovery. In addition to this, foaming can inverse solids profile, thereby
having more solids at the top of the digester, creating dead zones in the reactor and therefore
causing a decrease in the active volume. Economic problems that may result is energy loss, increase
labour and cleaning costs. [4]. Another inhibition of using dairy wastes as a substrate is that it may
result in high ammonia concentrations within the digester which will in turn inhibit the acetoclastic
methanogens which are responsible for dismuting acetate in the pathway for methane formation.
[5], [6]. Furthermore, a potential downside of using dairy waste as a feedstock is that it may result in
a decrease in pH despite the typical high buffer capacity of the anaerobic digestion broth. Both
methane and acid-producing microorganisms have an optimum pH range, so operating outside of
their optimum will decrease methane yields or potentially cause the reactor to fail. [2]

References

[1] G. Bylund, Dairy Processing Handbook, Tetra Pak, 2015.

[2] C. D. C. Gomez, The Biogas Handbook: Science, Production and Applications, Woodhead
Publishing Series in Energy, 2013.

[3] M. Luna-delRisco, "Biochemical methane potential of different organic wastes and energy crops
from Estonia," Agronomy Research, vol. 9, no. 1-2, pp. 331-342, 2011.

[4] N. Ganidi and et al, "Anaerobic Digestion Foaming Causes - A review," Bioresource Technology,
vol. 100, no. 23, pp. 5546-5554, 2009.

[5] T. Fenchel and et al., Bacterial Biogeochemistry, 2012.

[6] A. N. Hassan and B. K. Nelson, "Invited review: Anaerobic fermentation of daiy food
wastewater," Journal of Dairy Science, vol. 95, no. 11, pp. 6188-6203, 2012.

[7] R. Curry, M. Pérex-Camacho, R. Brennan and et al, "Quanitification of anaerobic digestion

feedstocks for a regional bioeconomy," Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Waste
and Resource Management, vol. 171, no. 4, pp. 94-103, 2018.