Encontro de Energia no Meio Rural
AGRENER

Abstract

BERNI, Mauro Donizeti and BAJAY, Sergio Valdir. Geração de energia e a digestão anaeróbica no tratamento de efluentes: estudo-de-caso na indústria de papel. In Proceedings of the 3. Encontro de Energia no Meio Rural, 2000, Campinas (SP, Brazil) [online]. 2003 [cited 05 May 2024]. Available from: <http://www.proceedings.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=MSC0000000022000000100003&lng=en&nrm=iso> .

The issue of industrial and agricultural residues represents an unprecedent environmental challenge to humanity, in terms of their recovery, storage and treatment. They jeopardise the current spatial distribution of human activities and, in the longer term, mankind future in the planet. In the other hand, the growing need to reduce production costs, together with the also growing environmental awareness and corresponding public pressures, have favoured the search for and the effective use of new technologies to treat effluents, within the scope of a sustainable development. One of such technologies has been the anaerobic digestion of residues, which is starting to be widely used due to its easy implementation and possibility to minimise the use of water and process inputs, together with the production of energy. It can be used to process agricultural, urban (sewage and waste) and industrial residues. This paper discusses the perspectives of treating effluents through anaerobic digestion, as well as reports the experience of using an Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket -UASB Reactor - in a paper producing plant, involving the conversion of organic matter into methane gas, to be burned in the plant boilers. Finally, the paper industry thermal energy needs and the potential scope of anaerobic digestion to meet them is addressed in the paper.