Enhanced solid-state anaerobic digestion of corn stover by alkaline pretreatment

Abstract

Alkaline pretreatment was applied to enhance biogas production from corn stover through solid-state anaerobic digestion. Different NaOH loadings (1%, 2.5%, 5.0% and 7.5% (w/w)) were tested for solid-state pretreatment of corn stover. Lignin degradation during pretreatment increased from 9.1% to 46.2% when NaOH concentration increased from 1.0% to 7.5%. The NaOH-pretreated corn stover was digested using effluent of liquid anaerobic digestion as inoculum and nitrogen source. NaOH loading of 1% did not cause significant improvement on biogas yield. The highest biogas yield of 372.4 L/kg VS was obtained with 5% NaOH-pretreated corn stover, which was 37.0% higher than that of the untreated corn stover. However, a higher NaOH loading of 7.5% caused faster production of volatile fatty acids during the hydrolysis and acidogenesis stages, which inhibited the methanogenesis. Simultaneous NaOH treatment and anaerobic digestion did not significantly improve the biogas production ( P > 0.05).