The modern alchemy or How to convert Municipal Solid Wastes(MSW) into biogas?

Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is a growing concern in the world and European authorities discourage municipalities to choose landfilling as their waste management strategy. The European landfill directive (99/31/EC) requires to reduce by 2010 biodegradable municipal waste landfilled to 75% of that produced in 1995. In addition, the Household Waste Recycling Act 2003 in the UK requires that waste collection authorities shall ensure that by the end of 2010, they collect at least two types of recyclable waste separate from the remainder of the waste. Anaerobic digestion and stabilization of MSW is an elegant solution to meet the more and more stringent regulations. A novel two-stage membrane reactor will be set up in order to provide the technical know-how to manufacturer for later scale-up of the process. So far, the biodegradability of a simulated MSW (mixture of paper waste (PW: 77.5 % dry weight basis), Kitchen waste (KW: 16.3 %d.w.) and garden waste (GW: 6.2%d.w.)) has been analysed using the Biochemical Methane Potential(BMP) method. The results are 39336, 1285, 17718 and 22825 ml dry CH4 STP/ g VS for KW, GW, PW and the mixture of MSW at 10% TS. This confirms not only the high biodegradability of KW but also that MSW is suitable for anaerobic degradation