The Wire
Mapping the seed corpus: where the water industry's suppliers cluster ◇ Desalination past the 100-million-m³/day mark: what the project data shows ◇ Tracker: China's water agenda — reuse mandates, sponge cities, leakage targets ◇ EU adopts recast Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive ◇ Beyond capture: PFAS destruction technologies move from lab to field ◇ India's Jal Jeevan Mission passes three-quarters of rural households connected ◇ US EPA finalizes first national PFAS drinking-water standards ◇ Thames Water crisis deepens as shareholders withhold new equity ◇
StubLast reviewed: 2026-06-08

Anaerobic Digestion

Anaerobic digestion stabilizes sewage sludge and organic waste in the absence of oxygen, reducing solids volume and producing biogas — a route to energy-neutral or energy-positive wastewater treatment.

Overview

In anaerobic digesters, microbial consortia break down organic solids through hydrolysis, acidogenesis, acetogenesis and methanogenesis, yielding methane-rich biogas that can fuel combined heat and power. The residual biosolids are reduced in volume and, after appropriate treatment, can be beneficially reused.

Digestion is central to the energy-neutrality goals now written into wastewater policy, including the EU's recast directive. This article is a stub pending expert review.

References
  1. [1]Anaerobic Digestion Model No. 1 (ADM1). IWA Publishing, 2002.