Effect of alkaline pretreatment of food waste on solubilization and biodegradability for anaerobic digestion

摘要

Anaerobic digestion is a proper method to treat organic wastes. Recent energy crisis imposes extra advantage on the anaerobic processes due to the potential energy recovery. In order to enhance the performance of anaerobic digestion of food waste i.e., one of the major organic wastes, alkaline pretreatment has been applied. Alkaline pretreatment can reach high solubilization of organic wastes. In this study, the effect of alkaline pretreatment of food waste on solubilization enhancement and biodegradability performance in the following anaerobic digestion was evaluated. The food waste ground by garbage disposers at individual houses of a residential complex was used. NaOH and KOH were selected as alkali-agents and effect of NaOH was compared to that of KOH under different conditions. According to the results, alkaline pretreatment enhanced the solubilization of food waste. However, the methane generation in the following anaerobic degradation test was not significantly improved.