2024 Volume 80 Issue 25 Article ID: 24-25003
The objective of this study is to replicate the acidification process due to trace element deficiency in methane fermentation of food waste, while identifying the change patterns of various indicators of methane fermentation and environmental conditions and examining the correlations between monitoring indicators to provide a foundation for realizing control methods and automatic monitoring. Using a completely mixed reactor with a mesophilic temperature and a HRT of 30 days, a long-term continuous experiment of methane fermentation using food waste without trace elements as the substrate was conducted, and two acidification processes were replicated while continuously monitoring each parameter and analyzing their correlations. As a result, the acidification process due to trace element deficiency was identified through indicators such as organic matter decomposition rate, biogas production, organic acid accumulation, and variations in pH and alkalinity, and was replicated twice. Moreover, among the automatically detectable parameters, linear correlations between CO2 ratio, pH, and ORP were identified, along with significant correlations between gas production rate, CO2 ratio, pH and alkalinity 6.5, TVFAs, and TVFAs/alkalinity 6.5.
