Rapid measurement of the yield stress of anaerobically-digested solid waste using slump tests

The anaerobic digestion of solid waste is usually performed using dry or semi-dry technology. Incoming waste and fermenting digestate are pasty media and thus, at the industrial scale, their suitability for pumping and mixing is a prerequisite at the industrial scale. However, their rheology has been poorly characterised in the literature because there is no suitable experimental system for analysing heterogeneous media composed of coarse particles. We have developed a practical rheometrical test, a slump test, for the analysis of actual digested solid waste. It makes it possible to estimate yield stress from the final slump height. From the slump behavior, we conclude that digestates behave as visco-elastic materials. The yield stress of different digested waste was measured between 200 and 800 Pa. We show that the media containing smaller particles or with higher moisture content are characterised by smaller yield stresses. This study thus demonstrates the impact of the origin of the digestate on the yield stress. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.