Mechanical pretreatment of waste paper for biogas production

C. Rodriguez, Abed Alaswad, Zaki El Hassan, A.G. Olabi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

In the anaerobic digestion of lignocellulosic materials such as waste paper, the accessibility of microorganisms to the fermentable sugars is restricted by their complex structure. A mechanical pretreatment with a Hollander beater was assessed in order to reduce the biomass particle size and to increase the feedstock’ specific surface area available to the microorganisms, and therefore improve the biogas yield. Pretreatment of paper waste for 60 min improves the methane yield by 21%, from a value of 210 ml/gVS corresponding to untreated paper waste to 254 ml/gVS. 30 min pretreatment have no significant effect on the methane yield. A response surface methodology was used to evaluate the effect of the beating time and feedstock/inoculum ratio on the methane yield. An optimum methane yield of 253 ml/gVS was achieved at 55 min of beating pretreatment and a F/I ratio of 0.3.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)157-164
JournalWaste Management
Volume68
Early online date5 Jul 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Oct 2017

Bibliographical note

© 2017, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

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