Anaerobic Co-digestion of Food Wastes, Algae, Pond Sludge and Cow Dung for Biogas Yield Enhancement as a Potent Approach to Reduce Carbon Footprints

ABSTRACT

Alternative energy sources such as biogas help us to minimise environmental issues such as desertification, pollution, erosion, and deforestation. In this regard, anaerobic digestion (AD) is one of the most ecologically favourable waste management technologies and it also represents a long-term fuel supply. The current research examines the production of biogas in an anaerobic digester using apple, vegetable, and fruit pulp wastes, algae and pond sludge mixed with cow dung using co-digestion. The response surface technique was applied to optimise the variables of co-digestion such as temperature, pH and concentration of wastes. Meanwhile, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) method was used to investigate the proximate analysis (fixed solids, total solids, volatile solids, and moisture content) of the wastes. The optimum values of daily biogas, cumulative biogas, cumulative methane and cumulative carbon dioxide were found to be 2008.7, 3401.8, 2266.3 and 1931.5 ml respectively. A desirability of 0.6 was achieved for at least 15 numerical solutions obtained using Design Expert Software. It was also observed that the rate of biogas yield is greatly affected by many factors such as temperature and total solid concentration.

Graphical Abstract

KEYWORDS:

• Design expert-13
• response surface method
• anova
• optimisation
• physicochemical pre-treatment
• co-digestion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Nomenclature

CD - Cow Dung

FW - Food Waste

CCD - Central Composite Design

EPA - Unite States Environmental Protection Agency

AD - Anaerobic Digestion

HRT - Hydraulic Retention Time

RSM - Response Surface Methodology

F/I Ratio - Feedstock to Inoculum Ratio

OLR - Organic Loading Rate

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sonam Sandhu

Sonam Sandhu is a research scholar at NIT Kurukshetra, Haryana. She had done B-Tech and M-Tech from Guru Jambheshwar University of Technology, Hisar, Haryana.

Rajneesh Kaushal

Dr. Rajneesh is presently working as Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering of NIT-Kurukshetra for the last 8 years. Prior to the post, he had been working as Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department of UIET-Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra. He has more than 15 Years of teaching experience with different institutes of repute. He is holding many important administrative and academic responsibilities in his present Institute. He has published more than 65 research papers in various Journals/Conferences of National and International repute.