Evaluation of pre-treatment processes for increasing biodegradability of agro-food wastes

Anaerobic digestion (AD) technology can be employed for treating sewage sludge, livestock waste or food waste. Generally, the hydrolysis stage is the rate-limiting step of the AD processes for solid waste degradation. Therefore, physical, chemical and biological pre-treatment methods or their combination are required, in order to reduce the rate of such a limiting step. In this study, four methods (mechanical shredding, acid hydrolysis, alkaline hydrolysis and sonication) were tested to improve methane production and anaerobic biodegradability of different agro-food wastes and their mixtures. The kinetics of anaerobic degradation and methane production of pre-treated individual wastes and selected mixtures were investigated with batch tests. Sonication at lower frequencies (37 kHz) proved to give the best results with methane productivity enhancements of over 100% in the case of pig manure and in the range of 10–47% for the other wastes assayed. Furthermore, the ultimate methane production was proportional, in all the cases, to the specific energy input applied (Es). Sonication can, thus, enhance waste digestion and the rate and quantity of biogas generated. The behaviour of the other pre-treatments under the conditions assayed is not significant. Only a slight enhancement of biogas production (around 10%) was detected for whey and waste activated sludge (WAS) after mechanical shredding. The lack of effectiveness of chemical pre-treatments (acid and alkaline hydrolysis) can be justified by the inhibition of the methanogenic process due to the presence of high concentrations of sodium (up to 8 g l−1 in some tests). Only in the case of WAS did the acid hydrolysis considerably increase the biodegradability of the sample (79%), because in this case no inhibition by sodium took place. Some hints of a synergistic effect have been observed when co-digestion of the mixtures was performed.