Anaerobic Treatment of Organic Waste for Methane Production under Psychrophilic Conditions

The anaerobically controlled biological degradation process is an innovative waste-recycling method to treat bio-wastes by comprehensive coordinated measures of microbes in order to significantly recover clean energy and organic fertilizer for managing versatile waste complexities. Biogas generation drops off drastically at the temperate conditions due to failure of mesophilic microorganisms to tolerate psychrophilic temperatures. As anaerobic microbes are very sensitive to temperature, decrease in temperature not only influences the composition, structure and activities of the microbial communities, but also alters the bio-chemical degradation steps of organic substances. The decrease in the population, growth and activity of microbial consortia increases the solids retention time twice to thrice, compared to the mesophilic and thermophilic anaerobic digestions and process instability. The low temperature adapted inoculum can enhance the startup and digestion operation as it may contain psychrophiles and mesophilic bacteria acclimatized on psychrophilic temperatures. The Instorage Psychrophilic Anaerobic Digestion (ISPAD) might be feasible for treating organic wastes due to its simplicity in temperate conditions. The aim of this study is to review psychrophilic anaerobic digestion treating organic wastes for biogas yield at the low temperature conditions. (C) 2014 Friends Science Publishers