Kinetic studies and anaerobic co-digestion of vegetable market waste and sewage sludge

The effect of anaerobic co-digestion of vegetable market waste and sewage sludge was studied extensively. The effects of co-digestion were compared with the separate digestion of vegetable market waste and sewage sludge. The batch studies were carried out using three bench scale reactors having 1.5 L working volume. The cumulative biogas production shows that the organic waste available from the vegetable waste contains easily biodegradable organic matter compared with the sewage sludge. First order reaction kinetics is maintained throughout the methanation fermentation. The reductions in volatile solids (VS) in the three reactors were in the range of 63-65%. The specific gas production for vegetable waste was higher (0.75 L biogas/g VSin. and 1.17 L biogas/g VSdes) than for the sewage sludge (0.43 L biogas/g VSin and 0.68 L biogas/g VSdes). Consequently, the specific gas production for the co-digestion of the mixture of vegetable waste and sewage sludge (0.68 L biogas/g VSin and 1.04 L biogas/g VSdes) was considerably higher than for the sewage sludge only. Batch kinetics of anaerobic digestion is useful in predicting the performance of digesters and for the design of appropriate digesters.