Predictive Modeling of Biogas Production from Anaerobic Digestion of Mixed Kitchen Waste at Mesophilic Temperature

Growth of population is directly influencing the municipal solid waste generation rate. Although, kitchen waste is disposed of mostly in developing countries and its potential of biogas production is not explored well. Anaerobic digestion provides opportunity of twofold benefits i.e. pollution abutment for environmental protection and biogas generation for sharing energy load. Present study was intended to understand the biogas production process at mesophilic temperature (37°C). The organic waste from kitchen was used to make up substrate, which was anaerobically digested in an experimental continues stirred tank reactor (CSTR). Inhibition phase was detected when the graph was plotted for first 60 days and about 28th day it was inhabited. Biogas production from recovered condition was subjected to statistical analysis. Simple regression yielded a good predictive model that gave a correlation of 0.995 despite of including the inhibition phase in complete analysis. An acceptable agreement between observed and modeled biogas production (BGP) rates has vetted sanctity of regression based predictive model. Such models can also be used to keep check on digestion process for optimization of biogas yield and deciding the substrate feeding rate and concentration on time scale.