The standard IBR tank is
10 x 4 meters (h x d)
(32.8 x 13.1 feet).
Though shown above in an insulated building, in many applications the IBR tanks themselves will be heavily insulated and unenclosed. Supportive pre- and post-digestion infrastructure, as indicated by the nature of the waste stream, is housed in an enclosure. Multiple IBR tanks
are operated in parallel.

Transition of the MRF to the MERF

American Anaerobic Digestion, Inc. was founded in the realization that the best features of the material recovery facility (MRF) could be combined with the Induced Blanket Reactor (IBR) method of anaerobic digestion to form the Material and Energy Recovery Facility (MERF).

While the traditional MRF recovers recyclable materials, it cannot recover the energy value of the biodegradable organics fraction of the waste stream. This unfilled need is a major problem worldwide, resulting in a waste of energy resources and the emission of greenhouse gasses.

American Anaerobic Digestion MERFs fill the need by recovering both materials and energy. At the facility front-end, high throughput processing equipment is configured according to the characteristics of the particular waste stream. At the back-end, the IBR method of anaerobic digestion is employed to speed the transformation of organics to methane — a clean renewable source of energy. The overall integrated system provides a complete solution.

The IBR method, in concert with pre-processing tailored to the waste stream, is equally applicable to the treatment of mixed waste, organics-rich fractions of dirty MRFs, source-separated organics, wastes from the food processing industry, and sewage sludge (“biosolids”). Unusual among anaerobic digesters, IBR exploits the extensive scientific understanding of microbial methanogenesis (generation of methane), thereby outperforming conventional digesters.

Mission Statement

The mission of American Anaerobic Digestion is to meet the needs of the 21st century, by providing cost-effective and publicly acceptable facilities to recover both material and energy from a wide variety of waste streams.

Municipal Solid Waste (MSW): A complex, problematic, mixture.

Integration of machine and microbe

Front-end configurations

Fundamentals of microbial methanogenesis

Anaerobic digestion – application of fundamentals

Comparative analysis of anaerobic digestion systems

IBR facilities and performance

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materials on this web site
are Copyright © 2009
American Anaerobic Digestion, Inc.
All rights reserved.