Biogas production from municipal waste mixed with different portions of orange peel

Abstract: Orange cultivation is a huge industry which increasing for each year. By the year 2010 theorange production of the world is expected to reach 66.4 million tons per year. Most of theoranges are used for orange juice production. Consequently, a large amount of organic wastes,including seeds, segment membranes and peel, counting up to half of the weight of usedoranges, are generated As alternatives to land filling and incineration, source separation andcomposting together with biogas production are being considered as suitable methods fortreating this fraction of wastes, because it holds a high amount of organic materials in form ofvaluable carbohydrate polymers. However, the presence of peel oil, limonene, known to haveantimicrobial effects, has showed to be a strong inhibitor for the biogas producingmicroorganisms. Therefore the orange peel waste (OP) was mixed with the organic fraction ofmunicipal solid waste (MSW) in this study to keep the concentration of this inhibitorycompound at low level.Based on the results from previous batch experiments, this study was performed in order toconfirm and develop the possible use of orange peel waste in biogas production. Since thebatch experiments showed that the methane production was not affected, when a mixture of70% MSW and 30% OP (calculated on the basis of volatile solids (VS) content added) wasused as substrate, a continuous anaerobic digestion experiment was performed using the samemixture of MSW and OP as a substrate in this study. Furthermore, a reactor utilizing onlyMSW was used as a control. Both reactors were operated during 35 days at thermophilicconditions (55ºC), with an organic loading rate of 3gVS/L/day and a hydraulic retention timeof 21 days. The methane production was around 0,5 Nm3/kgVS/day in both reactors duringthe first period of operation. However, the production of methane started to decrease after 20days followed by a sharp decrease during the last 5 days in the orange peel-containing reactor.Furthermore, a steadily increase (from 4,85g/L to 6,51g/L) in the total content of volatile fattyacids (VFA) could be observed here, while the total content of VFA in the control reactorremained at low levels (0,84g/L). A second experimental set up using a decreased amount ofOP (20% OP and 80% MSW) in the substrate mixture and operating at the same conditions sthe previous experiment was also performed and showed similar trends in the results. Thefailure of the process can be explained by inhibition in the system, which led to theaccumulation of VFA’s resulting in a decreased and finally no methane production. Thisinhibition might be caused by the accumulation of the inhibitory compound, limonene,presented in the orange peel waste. Therefore some treatment of the OP is necessary prior todigestion to avoid this inhibition. Batch digestion of treated vs untreated OP showed that themethane production of treated OP could be increased to 0,628 Nm3/kgVS compared to that of0,408 Nm3/kgVS from the untreated sample. Further investigations utilizing this treated OPfraction in continuous biogas process are necessary in the future.