Biodegradation of Agro-industrial Waste

The production of agro-industrial waste is growing worldwide and these wastes cannot be disposed on the ground without treatment. The objective of this work was to conduct composting process and anaerobic digestion of a mixture of agro-industrial waste (W), grape (GW), olive (OW) and tobacco (TW) waste. The composting process and anaerobic digestion of the mixture of GW, OW and TW in the ratio GW:OW:TW =1:1:1.98 (dry matter) were carried out in column reactors with effective volume of 10 dm3 and 124 cm3, respectively, during 21 days. The composting experiment was carried out under forced aeration, while anaerobic digestion was conducted without aeration at temperature of 37 °C in anaerobic digester. Three different anaerobic experiments were conducted, without inoculum (E1) and with different ratio of inoculum and waste (E2, E3). During 21 days of composting of agro-industrial waste, the obtained conversion was 50 %. The volume of biogas produced during 21 days in experiments E1, E2 and E3 was 256 cm3, 280 cm3 and 162 cm3, respectively. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License