Monitoring of periodic anaerobic digestion with flow-through array of miniaturized ion-selective electrodes

Abstract

In the last few years Electronic tongues (ETs) based on various sensor arrays were applied to the monitoring of various fermentation processes, as devices capable of fast, inexpensive, automated and on-line control. In this work a novel application of ET is proposed--flow-through array of miniaturized ion-selective electrodes (ISEs) was used for the analysis of samples obtained during anaerobic digestion (methane fermentation) performed in periodic conditions. The samples were classified according to their Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and Volatile Fatty Acid (VFA) content. Moreover, for this application a novel design of ISEs was developed, which is fully compatible with flow-through modules for sensor measurements.