Available online at www.sciencedirect.

com

ScienceDirect
Procedia Environmental Sciences 35 (2016) 756 – 762

International Conference on Solid Waste Management, 5IconSWM 2015

Study on Biogas Production ofJoint Anaerobic Digestion with

Excess Sludge and Kitchen Waste
Wen-biao Hana,*, Yu-zhu Zhaoa, Hao Chena,b*
a
Ordos Institute of Solid Waste Technology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Inner Mongolia
017000, China
b
Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China

Abstract

Excess sludge from wastewater treatment plant and kitchen waste were mixed at different ratios to investigate the digestion
process and efficiency in a joint anaerobic digestion system. The results showed that the efficiency of joint anaerobic digestion
couldbe higher than that for pure excess sludge or pure kitchen waste, when the TS ratio of excess sludge to kitchen waste was
1:4.After the digestion of 66 days, the degradation rates of COD, TS and VS could reach 49.7%, 37.8% and 30.0% respectively,
and the corresponding gas productions of TS and VS could reach 368mL/g and 677mL/g respectively.
© 2016
© 2016TheTheAuthors.
Authors. Published
Published by Elsevier
by Elsevier B.V. B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility ofthe organizing committee of 5IconSWM 2015.
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of 5IconSWM 2015
Keywords:Excess sludge; kitchen waste; joint anaerobic digestion; biogas production;

Introduction

The acceleration of urbanization in China has resulted in continuous expanding of city scale, rapid growing of
urban population and increasing production of municipal solid waste (MSW). According to recent statistics, the
cities in China produced about 130 million tons of garbage every year, and it continued to increase at an average
annual growth rate of 10%. MSW is the inevitable outcome of urban development, and will pollute the soil, water
and air, and even harm people's healthas a long-standing source of pollution, if it is not addressed or handled
properly (Baiet al. 2009).The characteristics of MSW in China are high in water content and high in organic matter
content, nevertheless it would become a resource with the use of anaerobic digestion technology, reducing the

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address:[email protected]

1878-0296 © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of 5IconSWM 2015
doi:10.1016/j.proenv.2016.07.089
 Wen-biao Han et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 35 (2016) 756 – 762 757

pollutions and in the meanwhile producing methane, the clean energy (Liet al. 2014).

Kitchen waste is one of the largest waste stream and accounts for about 30% of the total MSW, and the
anaerobic digestion as an environmentally friendly technology is capable of treating it. However, digestion process
tends to fail or the digestion efficiency would be greatly limited when one readily degradable organic matter is used
as sole substrate(Zhanget al. 2007;Ratanatamskulet al. 2014;Ratanatamskulet al. 2015) . Therefore, it would be
better to mix different feed stocks to one joint anaerobic digestion system to improve the efficiency of waste
digestion (Nathanet al. 2011; Wanet al. 2013;Madanet al. 2015). Excess sludge from wastewater treatment plant
contains a lot of organic matter, N, P, K and bacteria of anaerobic digestion, and could serve as an appropriate
substrate for anaerobic digestion (Athapol et al. 2007).

In this study, we would use excess sludge and kitchen waste as raw materials and mix them at different ratios to
investigate the digestion process and efficiency by monitoring the pH, COD, TS, VS and the volume of biogas in a
joint anaerobic digestion system, with a view to provide a theoretical basis for the engineering applications of joint
anaerobic digestion technology.

1. Materials and Methods

1.1 Materials and Inoculum

Kitchen waste used in this study was collected fromOrdos CityWaste TreatmentPlant, and the excess sludge and
the inoculatedsludge was collected from theNorthern Suburb Sewage Treatment Plantof Ordos. The
inoculatedsludge is acclimated asinoculumat the temperature of 35 Ԩ.

1.2 Experimental Set-up

Experimental deviceis ahandmadedrainanaerobic digestion device, which mainly consists of anaerobic digestion
bottles, draingas gathering bottles,compositionmeasurement waterbottles (1 L) etc.. Anaerobic digestion bottles and
draingas gathering bottles are sealed by suitably sizedrubber stoppers with glasspipes. The bottles are connected
with rubberpipes. The ligated digestion device is placedin a water bath set at a constant temperature of 35Ԩ.

1.3 Test Method

In this experiment, digestion substrates are prepared as “pure” excess sludge, “pure” kitchen waste and four
mixings of the two with different TS ratios. Each of the six treatment groups has two replicates, adding in 30% of
the inoculum. Anaerobic digestion tests are kept at 35 Ԩ, stirred daily. Sampling is conducted every three days, and
the volume of produced biogas is measured every day at 10:00 am. The characteristics of the raw materials at
different ES:KW ratios and the digestion conditions are shown in Table 1.

1.4 Measurements

COD is measured using the Fast Airtight Catalytic Method, the TS is determined by drying method, and the VS by
burning method. pH is measured using pHS-3C digital precision pH meter, and the biogas production is determined
with the drainage collection process by measuring the volume of water.
Table 1: Mixing ratios of excess sludge (ES) to kitchen waste (KW) and their characteristics

Raw Materials
pH COD/(mg/L) TS/% VS/%
ES ˖KW (TS˅
0:5 7.27 57202.9 7.59 63.33
1:4 7.37 49735.8 7.59 54.33
2:3 7.5 46135.6 6.82 51.31
758 Wen-biao Han et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 35 (2016) 756 – 762

3:2 7.5 42002.1 6.56 48.59

4:1 7.58 29601.5 5.27 43.46
5:0 7.71 29468.1 5.67 41.44

2. Results and Discussions

2.1 Changes of COD

As shown in Fig.1, COD of the raw materials at different mixing ratios decreases in general as time goes on, but
the COD decreases relatively more as the proportion of excess sludge goes down and the COD curve for the pure
excess sludge remains almost steady. It can be concluded from COD degradation rates in Fig.2 that the proportion of
kitchen waste plays a big role in removing COD in the digestion systems. When ES:KW=1:4, the degradation rate
reaches a maximum of 49.7%. As the proportion of excess sludge in the digestion goes up, the degradation rate goes
down, and it decreases to 1.6% for the pure excess sludge. This is possibly because the nutrition contained in excess
sludge is not sufficient to meet the demands for the growth and metabolization of the microbe, which can
besupplemented by kitchen waste.

Fig. 1. COD changes at different ES:KW ratios

2.2 Changes of TS and VS

The degradation rates of the raw materials at different mixing ratios are shown in Figure 3. When the joint
anaerobic digestion ends, the TS degradation rates of pure kitchen waste and pure excess sludge are 34.9% and
16.4% respectively, and VS degradation rates of the two are 27.9% and 9.8% respectively. In the four cases when
ES:KW are 1:4, 2:3, 3:2 and 4:1, the TS degradation rates decrease from 37.8% to 18.0%, and the VS degradation
rates decrease from 30.0% to 9.4%. It is obvious that in the case of ES:KW=1:4, both the TS and the VS degradation
rates are the highest, the same as in COD degradation, which indicates an synergistic effect between the excess
sludge and the kitchen waste in terms of anaerobic digestion.
 Wen-biao Han et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 35 (2016) 756 – 762 759

Fig. 2. COD degradation rate at different ES:KW ratios

Fig. 3. TS and VS degradation rates at different ES:KW ratios

2.3 Biogas Production

After 66 days of anaerobic digestion, the biogas production in this period for each test raw material is shown in
Fig. 4. It is seen from Fig. 4 that each material starts to produce biogas from the very first day, and that the kitchen
waste produces the most biogas, while the excess sludge produces the least. As the digestion time goes on, the
biogas production from pure excess sludge reaches a minor peak and goes down gradually to 20 mL till the end. Due
to acidification of digestion broth in cases of ES:KW=4:1 and ES:KW=3:2, the amount of biogas produced declines
after two small peaks in the early stage. It is interesting to note that the pure kitchen waste produces biogas of 1054,
1520 and 590mL on the 23rd, 40th, 51st day respectively. The similar peaks can also be found in the cases of
ES:KW=1:4 and 2:3. These peaks of biogas production in the late stage of digestion make greater contributions to
the cumulative biogas production than the rest (Fig. 5). By the end of the digestion, the kitchen waste has produced
the most biogas to 26048mL, and that of ES:KW=1:4 to 17595mL, similar to that of ES:KW=2:3 to 17451 mL,
which are much greater than those for ES:KW=3:2 and 4:1. The pure excess sludge has produced the least biogas by
4061mL, only 15.6% of that for pure kitchen waste. Thus, the proportion of kitchen waste in the raw materials
affects the biogas production greatly, and the higher the proportion of kitchen waste, the more biogas it produces.
760 Wen-biao Han et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 35 (2016) 756 – 762

This is probably because kitchen waste contains more organic matter which could be taken advantage of by microbe
easily. Meanwhile, greater proportion of excess sludge can shorten the production time of biogas to the early stage
(less than 10 d).

Fig. 4. Biogas production of raw materials at different ES:KW ratios

Fig. 5. Cumulative biogas production of raw materials at different ES:KW ratios

2.4 Changes of pH

In the anaerobic digestion of MSW, pH of the anaerobic system would directly affect the microbic activity, and
hence the biogas production efficiency. It can be seen from Fig. 6 that the pH values of raw materials dominated by
kitchen waste, i.e. ES:KW=0:5, 1:4 and 2:3, decline dramatically at first, then rise up slowly. This is because in the
early stage of digestion, raw materials would begin the process of hydrolyzingacidate, limiting the amount of active
methane-producing bacteria. The VFA produced by hydrolyzation cannot be used by these bacteria to produce
methane timely, resulting in a large accumulation of VFA in the system and leading to a continuous decline in pH
value. As the methane-producing bacteria start to grow, the VFA in raw materials would be consumed effectively,
and the pH would start to ascend slowly. However, the pH of other cases doesn’t descend remarkably, and start to
rise up slowly from 7.5 to 8.1 in the end. This could result from the fact that kitchen waste is acidic while excess
 Wen-biao Han et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 35 (2016) 756 – 762 761

sludge is alkaline. As the proportion of excess sludge weighs up, the buffer effect would become greater, so there’s
little fluctuation in pH value in other cases.

Fig. 6.pH changes at different ES:KW ratios

2.5 Discussion

Anaerobic digestion technology can serve as an ideal waste to resource approach of treating the organic fraction
of MSW, mainly kitchen waste as in China, if the efficiency of anaerobic digestion is improved substantially. As
indicated in the above experiments, the joint anaerobic digestion with two or more raw materials with different
biochemical properties would be an effective way to achieve this, which is also suggested by other studies (Zhang et
al. 2012). The high digestion efficiency of joint anaerobic digestion is based on complementary advantages of the
different characteristics of different materials, which can enhance the biological effect of digestion and conversion
rate. The mixing ratios of different materials are therefore vital to improve the unbalanced nutrition of digestion
substrate, as suggested in this study, and in the meanwhile the toxic effects of toxic compounds should be reduced
during the digestion process (Murtoet al. 2004; Li et al.2008;Wang et al. 2011). It is evident that the joint anaerobic
digestion with two or more raw materials mixed at certain ratio could have higher digestion efficiency than that of
any individual raw material, and the optimized ratios should be explored for more raw materials in further studies.

3. Conclusions

In this study, the best digestion effect could be obtained when the TS ratio of excess sludge to kitchen waste
was 1:4. After 66 days’ digestion, its degradation rates of COD, TS and VS could reach 49.7%, 37.8% and 30.0%
respectively, all higher than those of other raw materials, including pure excess sludge and pure kitchen waste, and
its biogas productions of TS and VS are also higher, only slightly lower than that of kitchen waste though. The
results showed that the joint anaerobic digestion of excess sludge and kitchen waste could improve the digestion
efficiency and provide a reliable basis for a better disposal of kitchen waste as well as excess sludge.

Acknowledgement

This research work was financially supported by Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic
of China, and National Key Technology R&D Program, China (2012BAC25B03, 2012BAC25B07).
References

1) Athapol P., Preeda P., AJIT P.,Aroon J.,2007. Influence of anaerobic co-digestion of sewage and brewery sludges on biogas production and
sludge quality. Journal of Environmental Science and Health Part A, 42, 911–923.
2) Bai L., Wang S.,2009. Treatment of municipal solid waste. Environmental Study
762 Wen-biao Han et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 35 (2016) 756 – 762

3) and Monitoring, 22(6),62-64.

4) Li C., Champagne P., Bruce C. ,2014. Anaerobic co-digestion of municipal organic wastes and pre-treatment to enhance biogas production
from waste. Water Science & Technology,69,443-449.
5) Li J., Yang S., Zheng Z., Song H., Meng Z., 2008. Anaerobic batch co-digestion of cornstalk and potato. ActaEnergiae Solaris Sinica,
29(10),1308-1312.
6) Murto M., Bjornsson L., Mattiasson B.,2004. Impact of food industrial waste on anaerobic co-digestion of sewage sludge and pig manure.
Joumal of Environmental Management, 70,101-107ˊ
7) MadanT.,Spyros G.,2015.Co-digestion of municipal sludge and external organic wastes for enhanced biogas production under realistic plant
constraints. Water Research, Available online 5 May 2015.
8) Nathan D., Ronald W., Randy P., Michael P., Steve S.,2011.Increased biogas production in a wastewater treatment plant by anaerobic co-
digestion of fruit and vegetable waste and sewer sludge-A full scale study. Water Science & Technology,64,1851-1856.
9) Ratanatamskul C., Onnum G., Yamamoto K.,2014. A prototype single-stage anaerobic digester for co-digestion of food waste and sewage
sludge from high-rise building for on-site biogas production. International Biodeterioration& Biodegradation, 95,176-180.
10) Ratanatamskul C., Wattanayommanaporn O., Yamamoto K., 2015. An on-site prototype two-stage anaerobic digester for co-digestion of
food waste and sewage sludge for biogas production from high-rise building. International Biodeterioration& Biodegradation, xxx, 1-6.
11) Wan S., Sun L., Sun J., Luo W.,2013. Biogas Production and Microbial Community Change during the Co-digestion of Food Waste with
Chinese Silver Grass in a Single-stage Anaerobic Reactor. Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering ,18, 1022-1030 .
12) Wang X., Yang G., Feng Y., Ren G., Han X., Song Z., 2011. Anaerobic Co-digestion Effects of Manure and Straw and Analysis of
Inlfuencing Factors. Journal of Agro-Environment Science,30(12),2594-2601.
13) Zhang H., Gu J., Sun W., Gao H., Wang X., 2012. Effects of Diferent Rations of Materials on Biogas Production,VFA and the Activity of
Dehedrogenase During Anaerobic Process. Journal of Agro-Environment Science,3l(2),422-427.
14) Zhang R., El-Mashad H., Hartman K., Wang F., Liu G., Choate C.,2007. Characterization of food waste as feed stock for anaerobic
digestion. Bioresour.Technol. 98, 929-935.