Abstract
Producing energy from fossil fuels has created unliveable conditions. Climate change for instance, is one of the most environmental issue of our time. Renewable energy, clean source of energy, is considered as an essential part of the remedy. In this study, we investigated the production of biomethane via anaerobic monodigestion of food waste (FW) and co-digestion of FW with cow dung. The digestion took place under thermophilic conditions at 45˚C. A comparative analysis was done on the biogas yield of both mono and co-digestion. FW, FW and cow dung of the ratios, 2:1 and 1:2 were used as the substrates in the digestion. The anaerobic monodigestion of FW displayed the highest biomethane yield produced, of 405.1 Nml. Two main parameters helped in achieving that, volatile solids content (VS) and total solids content (TS). In addition to the two parameters, the pH and the C/N ratio helped in enhancing the biomethane production of both mono and co-digestion. As the objective is the optimization of the biomethane yield by co-digestion, co-digesting FW with cow dung resulted in decreasing considerably the biomethane yield by 32.16 to 33.99%.