Hydrolysis of the Kitchen Waste through Dry Anaerobic Digestion - A Sustainable Environmental Practice for its Effective Management

Abstract

\n Population explosion coupled with rapid industrialization and urbanization has led to accumulation of food waste. Nearly, 1.3 billion tons of food waste has been encountered annually which poses a serious threat to the environment and human beings. Therefore, it has become imperative to look for the sustainable environmental practices to manage huge quantum of the waste. Anaerobic Digestion (AD) has emerged as techno economical viable solution with the aim of resource as well as energy recovery to combat the global energy crisis. In this study, an attempt has been made to study the hydrolysis of kitchen waste through dry anaerobic digestion being a suitable technology for treating organic wastes with varying composition and its superiority over the wet digestion. Laboratory scale batch studies were conducted on kitchen waste using three different dry fermenters of total volume 4-litre operating under mesophilic regime for duration of 32 days. The reactors were simultaneously operated with the retention time of 1 day, 2 day and 4 days, respectively. Comparative performance of leachate generation during hydrolysis reveals that reactor with 1-day retention time generates maximum leachate with high COD of 244 g/l and VFA of 12.99 g/l. The specific rate constants for hydrolysis of kitchen waste through dry fermentation with retention time of 1 day, 2 days, 4 days were found to be 0.063, 0.054 and 0.027 day−\u20091, respectively.