Methane Production from Poultry Waste; Effect of Different Types of Pre-treatment

Abstract

—Anaerobic digestion (AD) of biomass is a
well-established process to produce renewable energy, where
organic matter is converted to biogas by microorganism. High
solid content and complex structure of sludge-derived organic
matter, methane production during digestion is limited at the
hydrolysis step. Therefore pre-treatment of substrate is a way to
accelerate the hydrolysis step. This study aimed to identify the
optimum pre-treatment method to increase the methane
production from poultry waste prior anaerobic digestion. The
poultry waste was mixed with water, pre-treated, seeded with
inoculums. Chemical and thermochemical pre-treatment were
performed with NaOH and Ca(OH)2. The AD was conducted in
bioreactors and incubated in water bath at 37 °C for 15 days.
Results obtained show that the highest methane yield was at the
thermochemical pre-treatment with Ca(OH)2
with cumulative
amount of methane at 1665.17 ppm followed by chemical
pre-treatment with Ca(OH)2
, thermochemical pre-treatment
with NaOH and chemical pre-treatment with NaOH with
cumulative amount of methane at 1381.76 ppm, 884.07 ppm and
607.98 ppm respectively. Based on the comparison of the
results, the thermochemical pre-treatment with Ca(OH)2
is the
best pre-treatment as it produced the highest methane yield.