Enhancement of biogas production from Market Yard Vegetable Waste using biological pre-hydrolysis—a pilot scale

The application of biological pre-hydrolysis has become one of the predominant pre-treatment in anaerobic digestion (AD) to enhance biogas production from the Lignocellulosic and cellulosic fiber that contains agro waste such as uncooked vegetable waste. Effective management of this market waste may reduce environmental pollution. With the help of suitable pre-treatment process, the biogas generation can be effectively improved. This study aims to determine the optimum biological pre-hydrolysis (BPH) time for Market Yard Vegetable Waste (MYVW) and its impact on the biochemical biogas potential on the laboratory scale and pilot scale at ambient temperature conditions. The AD was run in a conventional mode for 300 days (without BPH), followed by a further 120 days operated with BPH-pretreated MYVW with the same 18-h BPH duration. A comparison was also made between the biogas production of MYVW’s pilot-scale biogas plant and the lab-scale BGP test. A comprehensive analysis of the biochemical process stability and performance of biogas production was performed by comparing VSLR and OLR, as well as other parameters in both phases with the feeding pattern. The novelty of this study indicates an enhancement of biogas production. A conventional AD process (without BPH) produced an average of 0.59 L-biogas/day/g VS fed. With BPH-pretreated MYVW, biogas production averaged 0.69 L-biogas/day/g VS fed. As a result, the AD process using BPH produces 16.94 ± 1.0% more biogas than the conventional AD process in terms of L-biogas/day/g VS fed.