Understanding Digestate and Sludge

Digestate is the residual slurry generated from the anaerobic digestion (AD) process, often containing up to 10% solids. This substance is typically rich in essential nutrients like ammonia, phosphates, and micronutrient metals. When landfilling is the chosen disposal route, it’s common to reduce the sludge volume, and consequently, disposal costs, by concentrating the solids through thickening and/or dewatering. 

However, AD is one of the most challenging sludges to treat. It poses high viscosity, high suspended and dissolved solids content which makes its flocculation efficiency particularly low. That’s why the best engineers from Esmil Group studied and developed an advanced digestate conditioning system which makes it able to efficiently separate solid part from the liquid and achieve exceptionally high dewatering efficiency.

Roller Press JD-750

Resource Recovery from Digestate

In Esmil AD treatment process, separated solid part is dewatered and used as a highly nutritious fertiliser which is easy to store and transport. Liquid part can be additionally treated depending on the requirements. Combining enhanced superfiltration and reverse osmosis technologies, Esmil process achieves separation of all nutrients which are left in the filtrate, recovering water from the one hand and producing liquid concentrated fertiliser as a by-product. 

Esmil Group is proud to offer a range of cutting-edge equipment for digestate treatment and sludge dewatering, including:

Our solutions are designed to meet the specific needs of digestate and other waste materials, offering efficient resource recovery while ensuring compliance with regulatory standards. Explore our Digestate Treatment and Sludge Dewatering solutions to discover how we can help you transform waste materials into valuable resources. Contact us today to discuss your unique project requirements.