Increased anaerobic production of methane by co-digestion of sludge with microalgal biomass and food waste leachate

The co-digestion of multiple substrates is a promising method to increase methane production during anaerobic digestion. However, limited reliable data are available on the anaerobic co-digestion of food waste leachate with microalgal biomass. This report evaluated methane production by the anaerobic co-digestion of different mixtures of food waste leachate, algal biomass, and raw sludge. Co-digestion of substrate mixture containing equal amounts of three substrates had higher methane production than anaerobic digestion of individual substrates. This was possibly due to a proliferation of methanogens over the entire digestion period induced by multistage digestion of different substrates with different degrees of degradability. Thus, the co-digestion of food waste, microalgal biomass, and raw sludge appears to be a feasible and efficient method for energy conversion from waste resources.