In this work, we have proposed a modified version of ADM1 (including Contois model for hydrolysis) for representing anaerobic digestion of microalgae. This model fits very well the data provided by a 140 day experiment of C. vulgaris digestion. Numerical simulations have then been used to evaluate performances of microalgae digestion.
The ability of ADM1 (originally proposed for waste activated sludge (WAS) digestion) to represent microalgae digestion confirms the observation of Ras et al. (2011): WAS and microalgae digestions show similar trends. Therefore, microalgae digestion could probably benefit from the improvement obtained with WAS digestion (pre-treatment, reactor design, simulation and control, etc.).