Biomethanation Potential (BMP) Study of Mesophilic Anaerobic Co-Digestion of Abundant Bio-Wastes in Southern Regions of Tunisia

Abstract

Tunisia is a country that suffers from energy demand problems and environmental matters. Thus, Tunisian authorities desire to encourage the development of renewable energy sources, especially from biological processes, like anaerobic digestion. Therefore, this study is focused on the evaluation of biogas and bio-methane yield from the co-digestion of three available and abundant bio-wastes in the southern regions of Tunisia. The three different raw materials are an organic fraction of municipal solid waste, chicken manure, and olive mill wastewater. In this context, experimental work to evaluate the potential of biogas and bio-methane production was carried out at mesophilic temperature 35 °C and batch mode. The present work highlights the possibility of generating biogas from these organic wastes and reducing the amounts of the wastes to dispose of in landfills. The experimental study of the co-digestion process under specific conditions of carbon to nitrogen ratio (C/N), T, pH, and inoculums to substrate ratio ISR provided a high yield of net methane and net biogas, in comparison with other research works. Results showed a higher specific net methane production per kg of volatile solids, which is equal to 0.338 Nm3 methane/kg VS and 0.430 Nm3 methane/kg VS for two studied cases. The obtained volatile solids reduction was found to be 91% of the initial content, for a hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 40 days.

Development of a tool to optimize economic and environmental feasibility of food waste chains

“…The different types of food waste considered in this study were obtained from local supermarkets. The chemical-physical properties were measured at the Analysis Lab of the Biomass Research Centre described in previous works [30][31][32][33][34]. A TGA 701 LECO has been used to perform proximate analysis and determine moisture, ash, total solid and volatile solid content, according to the following norms: UNI EN ISO 18134-2:2015, UNI EN ISO 18122:2016, and UNI EN 15,148:2010.…”

Study of regime parameters of the fermenter in the production of biogas from animal liquid waste materials

“…Manure biogas plants are most common in India, China, and Japan. Biotechnology has long been used in many European countries such as Germany, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, and others [2][3]. Due to the significant negative environmental impact because of the worldwide fast growing industry and increasing energy price, it is necessary to switch to alternative sources of energy and heat production [4].…”

Influence of the heavy metals concentration on the anaerobic co-digestion performance of activated sludge and Olive mill wastewater

“…Among the biogas sources, bio-waste from olive mill wastewater (OMW) and activated sludge (AS) are promising resources [1][2][3]. The anaerobic co-digestion process is regarded as a promising method for reducing bio-waste accumulation [4][5][6].Furthermore, the nature of the AS and OMW compositions required a short residence time for complete degradation, which was reported to be from 16 -46 days with volatile solids (VS) removal of 32% of total solid (TS) [7].The co-digestion process of AS and OMW improves biogas production and increases the process stability [4,[8][9][10][11]. The most effective ratios between AS and OMW have proved to be about 50%: 50% v/v [10].…”

“…However, the AD process faces many inhibitor parameters which are responsible for the decrement in the capacity of the functional microorganism and substrate toxicity [10][11]. One of the most inhibiting parameters is the heavy metals (HMs) concentration in the substrate [10].…”