Sustainable energy production from food waste—advanced production strategies and management in the anaerobic digestion process

Abstract

Abstract Anaerobic digestion has been adopted as a potential tool to resolve the menace of unrestrained food wastage. The inherent characteristics of food makes food waste inevitable. Food waste, high in biodegradability, rich in nutrition, and with suitable intrinsic characteristics, reveals its competency as a potential substrate for anaerobic digestion. Though food waste as a substrate is fortuitous, its anaerobic digestion confronts few challenges and necessitates to be resolved to achieve optimal efficiency. Food waste anaerobic digestion is an intricate process and requires continuous monitoring and maintenance of the critical operating parameters. This chapter deals with the critical parameters to be scrutinized and controlled to achieve desirable process stability and performance. The influence of the process performance and efficiency with respect to the substrate characteristics, reaction temperature, pH, organic loading rates, and hydraulic retention time are discussed by providing insights on their critical limits. Techniques such as codigestion to improve the nutrient balance, process stability and stage separation to handle higher organic loading rates at reduced hydraulic retention times are significant considerations for managing anaerobic digestors with deficient substrates. The strategies to enhance the performance of the food waste anaerobic digestion, trends in biogas upgradation and potential opportunities to improve the pecuniary benefits of the process has been discussed in this chapter.