Energy recovery from anaerobic digestion of banana peels

Abstract

Bananas are tropical fruits mostly eaten in Malaysia. The banana peels are high in organic, and putrescible caused the odour and leachate problem where it has been a dump. In practice, banana peels considered as a waste product that has been combined with municipal solid waste and dumped into the landfills. However, banana peels are bountiful in organic matter and high with moisture content. Thus, it could be a convincing substrate for biogas production through anaerobic digestion so that the major concerns of environmental protection is achieved aside from producing energy in a sustainable way. Therefore, this study was initiated to estimate the ultimate methane yield from the unripe banana peel (UBP) and ripe banana peel (RBP). Besides that, the assessment on the kinetics of the methane production from UBP and RBP is conducted using Modified Gompertz and first-order kinetic modelling. In this study, the anaerobic digestibility of banana peels measured in a batch reactor for 25 days each fed by UBP and RBP. The batch reactors operated at an inoculum to substrate ratio (I/S) of 1.0 and at a mesophilic temperature (37°C). The ultimate methane yields from UBP and RBP digestion were 847.57mLCH4/gVS and 1405.31mLCH4/gVS, respectively. The higher bioavailability (in term of COD, and solid) in RBP resulted in the higher methane production rate. Two first-order and modified Gompertz kinetic models were compared for the prediction of organic degradation, and the results indicated that the first-order kinetic model of the RBP fitted the experiment best. It concluded that ripe banana peels are the most preferable feedstock for the anaerobic digestion.