Bio-energy By-product as an Enhancer of the Biomethanation Process

Abstract

Abstract Biomethanation plays a significant role in energy generation from biodegradable wastes. It is also regarded as a feasible and effective method in food waste management. Biogas production can be enhanced by using various additives in the anaerobic digestion system. Biochar, a bio-energy by-product, is a porous, carbonaceous material produced from the thermochemical conversion of a wide variety of biomass, including agro-industrial by-products. Due to biochar’s various distinctive properties, it has numerous environmental applications, including their uses as an additive in the biomethanation process. Even though biochar prepared from different biomasses has been explored in the field of biomethanation, biochar from some feedstocks is yet to be studied. The purpose of this work is to study the CH 4 composition in the anaerobic digestion (AD) system of food waste using two different biochar, i.e., Coir-pith biochar (CPB) and mustard de-oiled cake biochar (MCB). Additionally, digestate was studied to observe the effect of biochar addition on issues like Volatile fatty acid (VFA) accumulation, and pH drop in the AD system. Energy dispersive X-Ray analysis of biochar revealed that MCB had more alkaline earth metals in comparison to CPB. The MCB-amended system showed an alleviation of acidification caused by the accumulation of VFAs to some extent by recovering the pH to a normal range and promoting the consumption of VFAs. Moreover, the MCB-treated system showed an average of 17.47% increase in the methane composition of biogas when compared with CPB-amended digesters. In comparison with the control treatment (CT), the results showed that MCB addition enhanced CH4% by 28.9%.