Cafeteria Waste to Biogas Plant

Abstract

Food waste is becoming a major problem in IUT. The best option for controlling food waste and replacing traditional cooking and heating fuel is to convert food waste to biogas energy via anaerobic digestion. In addition, digestate is produced, which can be used as fertilizer. Anaerobic digestion is a collection of biological processes in which microorganisms break down biodegradable material in the absence of oxygen. In this project, the food waste from the IUT cafeteria is being utilized for the generation of energy in the form of biogas. The experiment investigates cooked rice, potato peels, mixed vegetable peels as well as mixed food waste in different mixture ratios with water (1:1 to 1:5). Moreover, this research also investigates the mentioned wastes mixed with inoculum, i.e., bacteria generated from horse dung in specific ratios. The operational parameters, including temperature, humidity, pH of substrate, and hydraulic retention time of the overall anaerobic digestion process, are also of prime concern here. The use of temperature control is also implemented in this project. Temperatures of biogas produced at an optimum condition of 37°C will be compared with the regular temperature of the environment. This allowed us to find the differences in both conditions. A gas analyzer was used at specific intervals to determine the percentage of different gases (Methane, Carbon dioxide, and Hydrogen Sulfide) in the produced biogas from anaerobic digestion. After a specific period, i.e., hydraulic retention time, the highest methane content along with the maximum amount of biogas was determined from the samples.