Pretreatment of food waste for sugars and biogas production via microwave irradiation

• Main Author: Ong, Yen Peng
• Other Authors: Liu Yu
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/61233
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Food waste quantities have escalated over the years, especially in the developed parts of the world. As a result of this increasing trend, many countries have faced problems with the disposal of food waste, such as rising cost of incineration, depleted landfill areas and air and land pollution. Therefore in this study, a form of promising technology which allows for the conversion of food waste into sugars and biogas production through anaerobic digestion (via microwave irradiation) is tried and analysed. Food waste was collected from Sheng Siong’s canteen and homogenized. Then, it was subjected to microwave pre-treatment for saccharification. Microwave pre-treatments were conducted with and without chemicals i.e. acids and alkaline addition. Glucose concentrations were then analysed using the DNSA method. The highest glucose concentration of 25.31 g/L was obtained after 20 minutes using microwave pretreatment with 1.5% of hydrochloric acid. Following this, the samples arising from the most suitable conditions underwent anaerobic digestion and the cumulative methane production was analysed. This report has 5 chapters. Chapter 1 presents a brief introduction. Chapter 2 presents a literature review on FW pretreatment and anaerobic digestion. Chapter 3 details the materials and methods used while Chapter 4 presents the results and discussion. Chapter 5 concludes with recommendations for future studies.