Abstract
5L laboratory-scale anaerobic digester was used to study the effects of food size and washing rate of food waste on the mixed digestion with sewage sludge. Food waste was crushed with particle diameters of 4mm and 2mm and washed two to three times, and seven to eight times before feeding the batch digester. The digester with crushed of washed food waste showed better performance than that with uncrushed of unwashed to produce methane gas of reduce volatile solids. The digester with 2mm food waste showed 17.4% higher VS/TS reduction rate and 18ml higher methane production rate per gram VS input than that with uncrushed food waste, where VS and TS are volatile solid and total solids in the liquid effluent, respectively. Also food waste crushed eight times gave 8% higher VS/TS reduction rate and 11ml higher methane production rate per gram VS input than unwashed food waste.
