Determination of operational parameters for the first stage of continuous temperature-phased anaerobic digestion of oily food waste: Influent concentration, hydraulic retention time, pH control and temperature

Abstract

Anaerobic digestion is promising in both food waste reduction and energy upgrading. However, the intermediates in anaerobic digestion of such an oily food waste, long chain fatty acids, not only have low bioavailability but also significantly threaten operation stability. Temperature-phased anaerobic digestion is an emerging technology in recent years, expected to overcome those issues. Given significance of the first stage of the two-stage process, continuous thermophilic digestion of oily food waste was conducted, with mesophilic digestion operated in parallel as control, to determine practical operational parameters from operation performance and stability. The feeding concentration at approximately 4.50 % of volatile solids was identified to be applicative for a relatively stable operation. Due to slow β-oxidation for long chain fatty acids, hydraulic retention time for the first stage needed longer than 10 d to maintain anaerobes’ survival so that they were not inhibited. In addition to the risk from inhibition, readily acidified risk still existed, and instant pH control was demonstrated to be efficient in maintaining the habitat of microbial metabolism. Compared with no viable bacteria detected under uncontrolled pH, 36.7 % live cells could still be detected under controlled pH. Overall, thermophilic digestion obviously achieved advantages in higher substance degradation and methane production with lower stability risk. The genera Methanosarcina and Methanothermobacter played a significant role, with the ratio at about 2:1. While bacterial viability was not reduced remarkably in preliminary period of inhibition, long-term operation under high lipid loading resulted in its loss.