Unraveling the metabolic shift in anaerobic digestion pathways associated with the alteration of onion skin waste concentration

Abstract

Onion skin waste (OSW) is common waste in developing countries, which can cause severe environmental pollution when not properly treated. Value-added products can be chemically extracted from OSW; however, that process is not economically feasible. Alternatively, dry anaerobic digestion (DAD) of OSW is a promising approach for both energy recovery and environment protection. The main hurdles during DAD of OSW can be the hydrolysis and acidification. In batch tests, sludge digestate (SD) rich with methanogens was co-digested with different fractions of OSW for enhancing hydrolysis and raising biogas productivity. The cumulative biogas production (CBP) was 36.6 ± 0.3 mL for sole DAD of SD (100% SD) and increased up to 281.9 ± 14.1 mL for (50% SD: 50% OSW) batch. Self-delignification of OSW took place by SD addition, where the lignin removal reached 75.3 ± 10.5% for (85% SD: 15% OSW) batch. Increasing the fraction of OSW (45% SD: 55% OSW) reduced the delignification by a value of 68.8%, where initial lignin concentration was 9.48 ± 1.6% in dry weight. Lignin breaking down resulted a high fraction of phenolic compounds (345.6 ± 58.8 mg gallic acid equivalent/g dry weight) in the fermentation medium, causing CBP drop (219.0 ± 28.5 mL). The presence of elements (K, Ca, Mg, Fe, Zn, Mn, S and P) in OSW improved the enzymatic activity, facilitated phenolic compounds degradation, shifted the metabolism towards acetate fermentation pathway, and raised biogas productivity. Acidogenesis was less affected by phenolic compounds than methanogenesis, causing higher H₂ contents and lower CH₄ contents, at batches with high share of OSW.

Keywords: Biogas; Digestate; Enzymatic activity; Microbial community; Onion skin waste.