Abstract:
Anaerobic digestion is a process in which microorganisms break down biodegradable substrates in the
absence of oxygen. It can be used to treat various organic wastes and recover bio-energy in the form of
biogas, which contains mainly methane and carbon dioxide and the methane gas can be used for lighting and cooking. Primarily, the substrates’ phyisco- chemical properties (moisture content, ash
content, total solid content, BOD and COD) were determined using standard methods. The result
suggested that wot > pasta > Injera > bread > toilet waste interms of biogas yield. In this work
anaerobic digestion of cafeteria leftover food and toilet waste was carried out in a 5 L reactor (W8
xii
anaerobic digester for a temperature range of 20-33oC and initial pH of 4-9. During the experiments, the
biogas production was recorded using water displacement method and by considering the ideal gas
equation the concentration of methane was calculated. A maximum volume of 995.9ml was recorded at
30 day retention time at initial pH of 7 and at y ambient temperature condition. The maximum cumulative biogas production was 4001ml at 25oC and 10:90 toilet wastes to cafeteria leftover food
ratio. The kinetic parameters of the anaerobic co-digestion were investigated at selected temperatures. The degradation rate constant was determined in temperature of 20, 25 and 33oC. A pseudo first order
kinetic model was proposed for the anaerobic digestion. From Arrhenius equation the obtained values
of activation energy and pre-exponential factor was 7262.279 J/MOL and 717.408J/MOL respectively.