• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.51-58
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• 2016

In the Integrated Two-Phase Anaerobic Digestion (ITPAD) process, acid and methane fermentation take place in one reactor, which has advantages to cope with organic load variation and reduce foot-print required, compensating disadvantages of Conventional Separated Two-Phase Anaerobic Digestion (CSTPAD). In the present work, organic matter degradation efficiency and biogas generation amount and other performance parameters of the ITPAD fed with food waste leachate were analyzed. In addition, feasibility study on the ITPAD method was performed by comparing its digestion efficiency with that of the CSTPAD. Organic matter alteration and biogas generation of the integrated method were examined for approximately 130 days based on the 5ton/day scaled pilot plant. Experiment results revealed that organic matter removal rate was 80% for mean food waste leachate input amount of $4.1m^3/day$. The biogas generation rate was $63.0m^3$ per ton of food waste leachate input, corresponding to the input VS amount of $0.724m^3/kg-VS_{added}$, and methane content of generated biogas was approximately 61.3%. The ITPAD has a comparable or higher organic matter removal efficiency compared to the conventional separated two-phase anaerobic digestion method. Consequently, the ITPAD method has a great need to commercialize a food waste leachate treatment technology against highly concentrated organic waste leachate.