Abstract
The utilization of biomass is becoming more important for the realization of a decarbonized and recycle-oriented society. Recently, biomethane production by methane fermentation and biogas power generation have been attracting attention. In this paper, to summarize the research trends on biogas production, we first summarized the annual publication status of research papers on biogas utilization based on the Web of Science database. Then, the various enhancement technologies (pretreatment, additives, and co-digestion) applied to the methane fermentation to improve the efficiency and stability of the process are reviewed. The authors also introduced their recent co-digestion studies of municipal waste biomass (food waste, sewage sludge, and paper waste). Finally, several representative examples of methane fermentation plants that have been running in Japan are reviewed.
