Thermochemical Pretreatments of Organic Fraction of Municipal Solid Waste from a Mechanical-Biological Treatment Plant

International Journal of Molecular Sciences

Carlos José Álvarez-Gallego²  Luis Alberto Fdez-G࿎lfo¹  Mar໚ de los Ángeles Romero Aguilar²  Luis Isidoro Romero Garc໚² 

[1] Department of Environmental Technologies, CASEM building, University of Cádiz, Puerto Real 11510, Cádiz, Spain; E-Mail:;Department of Chemical Engineering and Food Technology, Faculty of Science, University of Cádiz, Puerto Real 11510, Cádiz, Spain; E-Mails:

关键词: anaerobic;    pretreatments;    solubilisation;    thermochemical;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijms16023769

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

The organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) usually contains high lignocellulosic and fatty fractions. These fractions are well-known to be a hard biodegradable substrate for biological treatments and its presence involves limitations on the performance of anaerobic processes. To avoid this, thermochemical pretreatments have been applied on the OFMSW coming from a full-scale mechanical-biological treatment (MBT) plant, in order to pre-hydrolyze the waste and improve the organic matter solubilisation. To study the solubilisation yield, the increments of soluble organic matter have been measured in terms of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), soluble chemical oxygen demand (sCOD), total volatile fatty acids (TVFA) and acidogenic substrate as carbon (ASC). The process variables analyzed were temperature, pressure and NaOH dosage. The levels of work for each variable were three: 160–180–200 °C, 3.5–5.0–6.5 bar and 2–3–4 g NaOH/L. In addition, the pretreatment time was also modified among 15 and 120 min. The best conditions for organic matter solubilisation were 160 °C, 3 g NaOH/L, 6.5 bar and 30 min, with yields in terms of DOC, sCOD, TVFA and ASC of 176%, 123%, 119% and 178% respectively. Thus, predictably the application of this pretreatment in these optimum conditions could improve the H₂ production during the subsequent Dark Fermentation process.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.