Improving the production of methane

while maintaining a significant level of process stability

is the main challenge in the anaerobic digestion process. Recently

microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) has become a promising method for CO

2

reduction produced during anaerobic digestion (AD) and leads to minimize the cost of biogas upgrading technology. In this study

the MEC-AD coupled reactor was used to generate and utilize the endogenous hydrogen by employing biocompatible electrodeposited cobalt-phosphate as catalysts to improve the performance of stainless steel mesh and carbon cloth electrodes. In addition

the modified version of ADM1 model (ADM1da) was used to simulate the process. The result indicated that the MEC-AD coupled reactor can improve the CH

4

yield and production rate significantly. The CH

4

yield was enhanced with an average of 48% higher than the control. The CH

4

production rate was also increased 1.65 times due to the utilization of endogenous hydrogen. The specific yield

flow rate

content of CH

4

and p

H value were the variables that the model was best at predicting (with indexes of agreement:0.960/0.941

0.682/0.696

0.881/0.865

and 0.764/0.743) of the process with SSmeshes 80/SS-meshes 200

respectively. Employing the catalyzed SS mesh cathode

in the MEC-AD coupled reactor

could be an effective approach to generate and facilitate the utilization of endogenous hydrogen in anaerobic digestion of CH

4

production technology

which is a promising and feasible method to scale up to the industrial level.