Inoculum Ratio Optimization in Anaerobic Digestion of Food Waste for Methane Gas Production

Abstract

AbstractSince the composition of solid waste varies depending on a community’s socioeconomic status this paper is an attempt toward the management of kitchen waste for Jorhat, Assam, India. With rapid growth in population, the environment in the country is facing a massive challenge and disposal of waste causes huge environmental impacts along with health issues. The energy from the waste is one of the most crucial treatments of solid waste. The present study is aimed to identify the optimum food to microorganisms (F/M) ratio for maximum methane production using Biochemical Methane Potential (BMP) test. The findings obtained from the experiments will serve as a baseline for the other researchers to select optimum F/M. The production of biogas from anaerobic digestion (AD) of food waste is analyzed where cow dung is used as inoculum. To check the potential of food waste to be used as substrate for AD process, initial characterization of food waste has been done. Along with this, characterization of inoculum (cow dung) is also performed. The food waste has been collected from Jorhat, Assam, India and the experiments have been conducted for four different F/M ratios viz. 1:1, 1.5:1, 2:1 and 2.5:1. The methane production is found to be highest while maintaining the F/M ratio at 2:1. This investigation is very relevant for this region as no previous study has been reported explaining the characterization/production of biogas for Jorhat, Assam, India.KeywordsBiogasAnaerobic digestionFood wasteBiochemical methane potential testFood to microorganism ratio