Synergetic anaerobic digestion of food waste for enhanced production of biogas and value-added products: strategies, challenges, and techno-economic analysis

Abstract

The generation of food waste (FW) is increasing at an alarming rate, contributing to a total of 32% of all the waste produced globally. Anaerobic digestion (AD) is an effective method for dealing with organic wastes of various compositions, like FW. Waste valorization into value-added products has increased due to the conversion of FW into biogas using AD technology. A variety of pathways are adopted by microbes to avoid unfavorable conditions in AD, including competition between sulfate-reducing bacteria and methane (CH₄)-forming bacteria. Anaerobic bacteria decompose organic matter to produce biogas, a digester gas. The composition depends on the type of raw material and the method by which the digestion process is conducted. Studies have shown that the biogas produced by AD contains 65–75% CH₄ and 35–45% carbon dioxide (CO₂). Methanothrix soehngenii and Methanosaeta concilii are examples of species that convert acetate to CH₄ and CO₂. Methanobacterium bryantii, Methanobacterium thermoautotrophicum, and Methanobrevibacter arboriphilus are examples of species that produce CH₄ from hydrogen and CO₂. Methanobacterium formicicum, Methanobrevibacter smithii, and Methanococcus voltae are examples of species that consume formate, hydrogen, and CO₂ and produce CH₄. The popularity of AD has increased for the development of biorefinery because it is seen as a more environmentally acceptable alternative in comparison to physico-chemical techniques for resource and energy recovery. The review examines the possibility of using accessible FW to produce important value-added products such as organic acids (acetate/butyrate), biopolymers, and other essential value-added products.

Highlights

• Population growth globally increases the generation of FW.

• FW generation, recycling, and reuse have been discussed.

• Biogas and bio-fertilizers can be recovered from FW through AD.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Keywords:

• Food waste
• digestate
• multistage system
• organic fertilizer
• anaerobic digestion
• composting
• bioenergy

Author contributions

Pooja Sharma: conceptualization, writing-original draft preparation, editing, and reviewing.

Sheetal Kishor Parakh: writing-original draft preparation.

To Hung Tsui: writing-original draft preparation.

Ambreen Bano: writing-original draft preparation.

Surendra Pratap Singh: writing-original draft preparation.

Vijay Pratap Singh: writing-original draft preparation.

Su Shiung Lam: writing original draft preparation, and reviewing the manuscript.

Ashok Kumar Nadda: writing original draft preparation, and reviewing the manuscript.

Yen Wah Tong: conceptualization, writing-original draft preparation, funding acquisition, project administration, and reviewing of the manuscript.

All authors have read and agreed to the final version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the National Environment Agency, Singapore under its closing the Waste Loop Funding Initiative (Award No. USS-IF-2019-6), and the National Parks Board, Singapore for providing the research site. This research is supported by the National Research Foundation, Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) program. Surendra Pratap Singh is also grateful to the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), a statutory body under the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India for the Start-up Research Grant (SRG/2019/001940).