“
“In Spain about 18 million tons per year of organic fraction municipal solid waste (OFMSW) were produced during the year 2011 [20]. At the same time, the amount of biological sludge from waste water treatment plants (WWTP) is growing with the increase in the volume of treated wastewater, and the management of biological sludge has thus become an environmental and economic Tacrolimus mouse issue [29]. The anaerobic digestion (AD) of biological sludge and OFMSW contributes not only towards achieving

the aim of the European directive [29], but also provides a route by which some of the energy inherent in this material can be recovered [28]. Moreover, the AD process offers the possibility to recycle nutrients, reduce greenhouse emissions, reduce odors and controlled waste disposal [2]. The anaerobic co-digestion of organic wastes has several advantages: the economical scale can increase as the quantity of waste increases; inhibitory compounds are diluted; the diversity of bacterial species increases INNO-406 order due to the nutrition from a wide variety of organic wastes and helps stabilize a digester ecosystem [10] and [18]. The numbers of co-digestion plants are continuously

increasing in many European countries and have become a standard practice [7]. Besides, researchers have been studying the co-digestion of OFMSW and biological sludge with different waste and mixture proportions; Hartmann et al. [19], consider the co-digestion of OFMSW and manure, establishing a mixture ratio of 50% VS as optimum, while Fernandez et al. [16], compare the co-digestion of OFMSW with fats from vegetable and animal origin. For biological sludge, its co-digestion with tanning residues were studied by Di Berardino and Martinho [14], revealing this to be technically feasible and economically advantageous and Komatsu et al. [23] obtained

increases from 66% to 82% GNAT2 with the co-digestion of sewage sludge and rice straw using a mixture ratio of 1:0.5 based in TS. Biological sludge and OFMSW are two available wastes with a high methane potential due to their high VS solid content, especially OFMSW, whose inherent problems derived from landfilling or incineration could be solved by the co-digestion process. Several studies had determined the optimum mixture ratio for these two substrates: Kim et al. [22] determine an optimum ratio of 50% VS for both substrates, Sosnowski et al. [33] define a 75% dw biological sludge and 25% dw for OFMSW as optimum, La Cour jansen et al. [25] explain how the mixture of 80% VS for sewage sludge and 20% for OFMSW is the best option and Cabbai et al. [9] studied ratios in volatile solids (VS) of 0.23 and 2.09 gVS/gVS for biological sludge with good results. Then, a depth study is needed, in order to optimize the substrates mixture ratio, the parameters involve in the biodegradation process and the kinetic parameters.