• 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.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.663-668
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• 2012

The feasibility of enhancing biological nutrient removal from an industrial wastewater was tested with food waste leachate and sugar liquid waste as external carbon sources. Long term influences of adding external carbon sources were investigated to see how the biological nutrient removal process worked in terms of the removal efficiency. The addition of the external carbons led to a significant improvement in the removal efficiency of nutrients: from 49% to approximately 76% for nitrogen and from 64% to around 80% for phosphorus. Approximately, 20% of the removal nitrogen was synthesized into biomass, while the remaining 80% was denitrified. Though the addition of external carbon sources improved nutrient removal, it also increased the waste sludge production substantially. The optimal observed BOD/TN ratio, based on nitrogen removal and sludge production, was around 4.0 in this study.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.55-60
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• 2014

Food waste leachate (FWL) is a serious pollutant waste coming from the food waste recycling facilities in Korea. FWL has a high organic matter content and high COD to nitrogen (COD/N) ratio, which can disturb efficient methane production in the anaerobic digestion of FWL. In the present study a microalga, Clorella vulgaris (C.V), was used as co-substrate for the FWL anaerobic digestion in order to supply nutrients, decrease the COD/N ratio and increase its methane yield. Different co-digestion mixtures (COD/N ratios) were studied by using biochemical methane potential test and modified Gompertz equation for kinetic study. Mixed substrate of FWL and C. vulgaris in the co-digestion clearly showed more the biomethane yield than the sole substrates. The maximum methane production, 827.7 mL-$CH_4$/g-VS added, was obtained for COD/N ratio of 24/1, whereas the highest improvement of methane yield was found for COD/N ratio of 15/1.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.21-29
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• 2016

We mix food waste leachate and sewage sludge by the proportion of 1:9, 3:7 and 5:5. It turns out that they produced 233, 298 and 344 $CH_4{\cdot}mL/g{\cdot}VS$ of methane gas. The result suggests that as the mixing rate of food waste leachate rises, the methane gas productions increases as well. And more methane gas is made when co-digesting sewage sludge and food waste leachate based on the mixing ratio, rather than digesting only sewage sludge alone. Modified Gompertz and Exponential Model describe the BMP test results that show how methane gas are produced from organic waste. According to the test, higher the mixing rate of food waste leachate is, higher the methane gas productions is. The mixing ratio of food waste leachate that produces the largest volume of methane gas is 3:7. Modified Gompertz model and Exponential model describe the test results very well. The correlation values($R^2$) that show how the results of model prediction and experiment are close is 0.92 to 0.98.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.61-70
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• 2012

Feasibility of co-digestion was investigated by a series of anaerobic batch experiments using sewage sludge, swine waste, and food waste leachate as substrates. The organic solid wastes were collected from M city, where the daily productions of sewage sludge, swine waste, and food waste leachate were 178 ton/d, 150 ton/d, and 8 ton/d, respectively. Both swine waste and food waste leachate showed superior methane yields, methane productivities, and organic pollutant removal efficiencies compared to sewage sludge. Co-digestion of the total amounts of organic solid wastes would enhance methane production by 5.60 times $(530\;m^{3}\;CH_{4}/d\;{\rightarrow}\;2,968\;m^{3}\;CH_{4}/d)$. However, it also increase the amount of digestate by 1.88 times with 3.79 to 4.92 times higher pollutants (chemical oxygen demands total nitrogen, and total phosphorus) loading rates. Co-digestion of organic solid wastes is a valid strategy to enhance the performance of an anaerobic sludge digester and the energy independence of a wastewater treatment plant. Anyhow,the increment of digestate with higher pollutant loading would need a careful counterplan in the operation of the main stream of the treatment plant.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.61-70
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• 2005

In order to reduce salt(as NaCl) contents in food waste and to improve the quality of discharged wastewater produced during the recycling process of food waste for the purpose of compost and feed stuff, a salt reduction process by added water into food waste was developed. The pilot plant with a rotary type salt reduction equipment to manage continuously 0.5 ton food waste per hour was constructed and the efficiency was tested. The amount of added water was calculated by the water content and the efficiency of dewatering process of food waste. Approximately 0.8 liter water per a kilogram of food waste was injected into the reactor in which food waste was pouring simultaneously, then diluted/mixed in a rotary reactor. About 1.1 liter of leachate including added water was generated, but the leachate contained a very high content of organic particles, so most particles were recovered by two step solid-liquid separation process. The first step was a gravitational filtering process using screens with a pore diameter of 1mm, and the second separation process was centrifugal process. Organic quality of food waste which had been desalted was maintained by inputting the entirely recovered organic particles. The efficiency of salt reduction of food waste was estimated by measuring a chloride anion by titration and salinity by a probe. The results by the two different measuring methods were always over 50%, and the quality of final wastewater was improved up to $200mg/{\ell}$ as TS(total solid) by an additional settling process after the two step solid-liquid separation process.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.183-192
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• 2015

Response surface methodology (RSM) based on a Box-Behnken Design (BBD) was applied to optimize the thermal-alkaline pre-treatment operating conditions for anaerobic digestion of flotation scum in food waste leachate. Three independent variables such as thermal temperature, NaOH concentration and reaction time were evaluated. The maximum methane production of 369.2 mL $CH_4/g$ VS was estimated under the optimum conditions at $62.0^{\circ}C$, 10.1% NaOH and 35.4 min reaction time. A confirmation test of the predicted optimum conditions verified the validity of the BBD with RSM. The analysis of variance indicated that methane production was more sensitive to both NaOH concentration and thermal temperature than reaction time. Thermal-alkaline pretreatment enhanced the improvement of 40% in methane production compared to the control experiment due to the effective hydrolysis and/or solubilization of organic matters. The fractions with molecular weight cut-off of scum in food waste leachate were conducted before and after pre-treatment to estimate the behaviors of organic matters. The experiment results found that thermal-alkaline pre-treatment could reduce the organic matters more than 10kD with increase the organic matters less than 1kD.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.357-362
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• 2017

Acetate, propionate, butyrate are the major soluble volatile fatty acids metabolites of fermented food waste leachates. This work investigate the effects of volatile fatty acid on the growth rate and $NH_4-N$, $PO_4-P$ removal efficiency of mixotrophic microalgae Chlorella vulgaris to treat digested food waste leachates. The results showed that acetate, propionate and butyrate were efficiently utilized by Chlorella vulgaris and microalgae growth was higher than control condition. Similar trends were observed upon $NH_4-N$ and $PO_4-P$ consumption. Volatile fatty acids promoted Chlorella vulgaris growth, and nutrient removal efficiencies were highest when acetate was used, and butyrate and propionate showed second and third. From this work it could be said that using mixotrophic microalgae, in this work Chlorella vulgaris, fermented food waste leachates can be treated with high efficiencies.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.559-567
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• 2014

Since the ocean dumping of organic wastes is prohibited under the London Convention, the need for land treatment of food waste leachate (FWL) has significantly been growing in recent years. This study was conducted to use thermal solubilization to turn FWL into a form that can easily be degraded during the anaerobic digestion process, thereby reducing the percentage of solids and increasing the production of methane. To derive the optimal operating conditions of thermal solubilization, a laboratory-scale reactor was built and operated. The optimal reaction temperature and time turned out to be $190^{\circ}C$ and 90 min, respectively. The BMP test showed a methane production of 465 mL $CH_4/g$ $COD_{Cr}$ and a biodegradation rate of 90.1%. The production of methane rose by about 15%, compared with no the application of thermal solubilization. To reduce the solid content of FWL and improve the methane production, therefore, it may be helpful to apply thermal solubilization to pre-treatment facilities for anaerobic digestion.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.91-97
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• 2005

The purpose of this research is malodor reduction of food waste leachate by some microorganism. In oder to observe the efficiency of malodor reduction by different microorganisms, 300ml of food waste leachate was fermented by the addition of 10% precultured seed microorganism such as marine algae of Spirulina plantensis, Chlorella vulgaris, the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisae and bacteria Bacillus cereus for 10 days. During the fermentation the change in pH, salinity and sensory evaluations were tested. As the results, the pH values of samples in the beginning were 3.5~4.0. After fermentation they are increased to the level 4.9~7.4. The salinity values of the samples fermented by Spirulina plantensis and Chlorella vulgaris were lowered rapidly. By the sensory evaluation, the efficiency of malodor reduction by Chlorella vulgaris of the marine microalgae showed almost inodorous degree of ordor 1.