Resumen

SOLARTE TORO, Juan Camilo; MARISCAL MORENO, Juan Pablo  y  ARISTIZABAL ZULUAGA, Beatriz Helena. Evaluation of anaerobic digestion and co-digestion of food waste and grass cuttings in laboratory scale bioreactors. Rev. ion [online]. 2017, vol.30, n.1, pp.105-116. ISSN 0120-100X.  https://doi.org/10.18273/revion.v30n1-2017008.

Environmental degradation caused by high consumption of fossil fuels and improper disposal of solid waste have encouraged its conversion into high value-added products like bioenergy from different biotechnological processes in order to offset some of the energy requirements. This work aims to evaluate the efficiency, performance and productivity of anaerobic digestion and co-digestion processes of food waste and grass cuttings to assess its viability as substrates in biogas generation. The mesophilic anaerobic digestion process was monitored and conducted for selected waste fractions by using 3L batch bioreactors (active volume), Inoculum to Substrate Ratio (ISR) of 0.25 (total solids), and food to grass cuttings ratio of 1.6 (total solids). The achieved biogas production efficiencies were 38% and 49% for mono-digestion of both grass cuttings and food waste. Biogas generation by co-digestion increased process efficiency up to 66%. The theoretical methane potential was calculated based on Buswell equation and the Gompertz model for biomass growth was used to simulate the biogas accumulation. The results suggest that mixing food waste to grass cuttings increase biogas yield and prevents an excessive pH decrease. Co-digestion of these substrates is a good alternative for bioenergy production using daily generated waste in Colombian cities with a higher yield than mono-substrate degradation.

Palabras clave : biogas; co-digestion; anaerobic digestion; food waste; grass cuttings.

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