Thermal pretreatment is an interesting technique not only for increasing sludge biodegradability, leading to higher methane productivity, but also for improving degradation rates, allowing full-scale plants to reduce the size of digesters. In this study, the Anaerobic Digestion Model No. 1 (ADM1) was used as a tool to assess the effects of thermal pretreatment and hydraulic retention time (HRT) on the performance of three pilot-scale digesters fed with mixed sludge with/without pretreatment applied to the waste activated sludge fraction. Calibration procedures using batch tests showed an increase of up to five times in the model disintegration coefficient due to the pretreatment, and the validations performed presented good accuracy with the experimental data, with under/overestimation lower than 15% in both average and global accumulated CH4 productions. Therefore, the ADM1 demonstrated its feasibility and usefulness in predicting and assessing the behavior of the digesters under these conditions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.