• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.65-70
• /
• 2002

The previous studies showed that rumen microorganisms had an enhanced waste-degrading capability and controlling the dilution rate was very effective in improving acidification efficiency. Generally the composition of food waste has a small deviation value, but one of the waste components (grains, vegetables or meats) can be increased dramatically depending on a seasonal variation. Thus, it is important to evaluate the efficiency of acidogenic fermentation in this case. Each component was spiked to be 80% of the total waste in R1 (grains), R2(vegetables), and R3 (meats). In Rl, rapid degradation occurred during the initial two days. R2 showed similar performance to that of general food waste. In R3, degradation retarded in the initial stage and then increased after controlling the dilution rate. The acidification efficiencies of the reactors were 88.7 (R1), 73.5 (R2), and 62.1% (R3), respectively. Therefore, the fermentation efficiency was kept over 62% regardless of waste components, indicating that it was stable to acidify food waste by employing rumen microorganisms and controlling the dilution rate.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
• /
• v.8 no.3
• /
• pp.112-117
• /
• 2000

Food waste is the main source of decay, odors and leachate in collection, transportation and landfill due to the high volatile solids (VS) and moisture content. Acidogenic fermentation of food waste is affected by the fermentation constraints including the biodegradability of substrate and the degrading capability of microorganisms. The biodegradability of food waste is mainly related to cellulosic materials, which are hardly degraded and comprise about 50% of food waste. The efficient and economical method of improving hydrolysis is, therefore, to apply microorganisms with increased cellulose-degrading capability. In this experiment, rumen microorganisms were inoculated to improve the low efficiency of acidogenic fermentation, and then compared with that of mesophilic acidogens. The fermentation of food waste in a leaching bed reactor employing rumen microorganisms resulted in the enhanced acidification (71.2% at $3.0d^{-1}$), which was higher than that (59.8% at $4.5d^{-1}$) employing mesophilic acidogens. This indicated that Rumen microorganisms had an enhanced waste-degrading capability.