The Anaerobic Digestion of Organic Fraction of Household Waste of Kenitra City

An anaerobic digestion (AD) study of existing organic waste in Kenitra, Morocco was never performed before; the experiment used in this work is considered as the first one in the city. The purpose was to determine composition and characteristics of the waste to implement this kind of process at laboratory scale in order to measure the methane production and deduce biodegradability of the organic fraction of household waste (OFHW) of Kenitra city, also to control stability parameters of the process during the experiment. Anaerobic digestion (AD) of the organic fraction of Household Waste (OFHW) can be considered as renewable source of energy which generates important volumes of methane (CH 4 ), in fact the AD contribute mainly in greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction which is the main landfill disposal problem and it is considered as the best solution of this problem. This process was studied in semi-continuous laboratory scale at mesophilic temperature, in faculty of sciences, University Ibn Tofail, Kenitra, using as raw material: OFHW ... the studied waste is a mixture of samples taken from a several households of various places of Kenitra city in Morocco, sorted manually, mixed for a better homogenization and diluted in order to ensure stability of the process. Recent research has demonstrated that (OFHW) of kenitra city is a potentially valuable resource that can be developed into high value products such as methane. The results obtained during the retention time of the experiment, which is 35 days, shows that the digestion of OFHW recovered from Moroccan kitchens present a very high organic matter of volatile solids around 90.67% of equivalent of to 108.6 g/Kg VS and a pH around 5.8. The process under mesophilic conditions provides a reliable solution for the treatment of this kind of waste; this is proved by the increasing volume of methane obtained and the high biodegradability. The methane yield found is about 382 (ml CH 4 / g VS added) and the biodegradability reached 91% under these conditions. Keywords: Anaerobic digestion, OFHW, mesophilic conditions, Biodegradability, methane yield, renewable energy, Volatile solids.