Improved Food Waste Stabilization and Valorization by Anaerobic Digestion Through Supplementation of Conductive Materials and Trace Elements

The positive effects of conductive material supplementation on anaerobic digestion have been mainly investigated for single synthetic substrates, while its significance for real and complex organic wastes such as food waste has not been sufficiently investigated. This study investigated the effect of conductive material (biochar and magnetite) and trace metal supplementation on the anaerobic digestion of food waste by means of biochemical methane potential assays. The results indicated that the supplementation of biochar and trace metals improved both total biogas production and methane yields. A biochar dose of 2.0 and 5.0 g/L resulted in 11.2 ± 6.5 and 27.3 ± 9.5% increase in biogas and 8.3 ± 6.8 and 33.2 ± 2.8% increase in methane yield, respectively. Moreover, the same reactors demonstrated high food waste stabilization performance of over 80% chemical oxygen demand removal efficiency. These results indicate that biochar supplementation leads to more enhanced anaerobic digestion operation that could be through increased surface area for microbial growth and/or direct interspecies electron transfer mechanism. In turn, food waste will not only be stabilized but also valorized by anaerobic digestion at higher efficiencies that support sustainable waste management through both environmentally safe disposal and value-added generation.