Pretreatment and Anaerobic Co-digestion of Selected PHB and PLA Bioplastics

Conventional petroleum-derived plastics are recalcitrant to biodegradation and can be problematic as they accumulate in the environment. In contrast, it may be possible to add novel, biodegradable bioplastics to anaerobic digesters at municipal water resource recovery facilities along with primary sludge to produce more biomethane. In this study, thermal and chemical bioplastic pretreatments were first investigated to increase the rate and extent of anaerobic digestion. Subsequently, replicate, bench-scale anaerobic co.-digesters fed synthetic primary sludge with and without PHB bioplastic were maintained for over 170 days. Two polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB), one poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-4-hydroxybutyrate) and one polylactic acid (PLA) bioplastic were investigated. Biochemical methane potential (BMP) assays were performed using both untreated bioplastic as well as bioplastic pretreated at elevated temperature (35-90 degrees C) under alkaline conditions (8