Strategy to enhance the semicontinuous anaerobic digestion of food waste via exogenous additives: experimental and machine learning approaches

Chuan Ding; Yi Zhang; Xindu Li; Qiang Liu; Yeqing Li; Yanjuan Lu; Lu Feng; Junting Pan; Hongjun Zhou

doi:10.1039/d3ra05811e

Strategy to enhance the semicontinuous anaerobic digestion of food waste via exogenous additives: experimental and machine learning approaches

RSC Adv. 2023 Dec 4;13(50):35349-35358. doi: 10.1039/d3ra05811e. eCollection 2023 Nov 30.

Authors

Chuan Ding¹, Yi Zhang¹, Xindu Li¹, Qiang Liu¹, Yeqing Li¹, Yanjuan Lu², Lu Feng³, Junting Pan⁴, Hongjun Zhou¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Heavy Oil Processing, Beijing Key Laboratory of Biogas Upgrading Utilization, College of New Energy and Materials, China University of Petroleum Beijing (CUPB) Beijing 102249 P. R. China liyeqing@cup.edu.cn zhhj63@163.com.
² Beijing Fairyland Environmental Technology Co., Ltd Beijing 100080 P. R. China.
³ Division of Environment and Natural Resources, Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO) 1431 Ås Norway.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Efficient Utilization of Arid and Semi-arid Arable Land in Northern China, Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences Beijing 100081 P. R. China.

Abstract

The anaerobic digestion (AD) of food waste (FW) was easy to acidify and accumulate ammonia nitrogen. Adding exogenous materials to the AD system can enhance its conversion efficiency by alleviating acidification and ammonia nitrogen inhibition. This work investigated the effects of the addition frequency and additive amount on the AD of FW with increasing organic loading rate (OLR). When the OLR was 3.0 g VS per L per day and the concentration of the additives was 0.5 g per L per day, the stable methane yield reached 263 ± 22 mL per g VS, which was higher than that of the group without the additives (189 mL per g VS). Methanosaetaceae was the dominant archaea, with a maximum abundance of 93.25%. Through machine learning analysis, it was found that the optimal daily methane yield could be achieved. When the OLR was within the range of 0-3.0 g VS per L per day, the pH was within the range of 7.6-8.0, and the additive concentration was more than 0.5 g per L per day. This study proposed a novel additive and determined its usage strategy for regulating the AD of FW through experimental and simulation approaches.