Abstract

Laccase pretreatment of yard waste (YW) was conducted for improving its anaerobic biodegradability. The optimum pretreatment condition based on response surface methodology for maximum delignification was: solid loading 19.7% (w/v) of total solid, treatment duration 9 h, and pretreatment temperature 44.5 °C. The mechanism of biomass delignification was further investigated by the change in physical and chemical properties. Specifically the increase in water retention value (2.05 times), specific porosity (1.72 times), and crystallinity index (1.25 times) in pretreated YW indicates the capability of laccase pretreatment to remove lignin selectively. The methane yield after 30 days of anaerobic digestion for untreated YW was 294 ± 12 mL/g volatile solid (VS) and for laccase pretreated yard waste at the optimum condition was 405 ± 15 mL/gVS. The Modified Gompertz model showed the best fit for untreated yard waste however for pretreated YW logistic function model was the best. The energy balance analysis of the studied method confirmed a positive energy gain of 1.6 kJ/g VS indicates further validation in field scale studies.

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