Co-digestion of municipal solid waste with lignocellulosic waste in mesophilic Environment.

The present study deals with the dual problem of municipal solid waste and lignocellulosic waste in which authors tried to use these two waste materials as clean and renewable energy source. In the present study, anaerobic digestion of organic fraction of municipal solid waste and lignocellulosic waste in varying combinations was carried out. Five-set of experiments (S1, S2, S3, S4, and S5) under mesophilic conditions were conducted in batch reactors. From all the combinations, reactor S3 (organic fraction of municipal solid waste: lignocellulosic waste, 1:1 ratio) was observed to be the best combination producing 70.09 ml concentration of methane out of 78.76 ml of biogas as compared to all other combinations. The increase in methane production rate was observed by 53.67% due to the addition of lignocellulosic waste. The decline in methane production at the end of the 50th day was observed due to a fall in pH, which created acidic conditions, thus inhibiting the conversion process. It was found that the mesophilic condition acted as a governing factor in the process of digestion.

Effect of bulking agents and cow dung as inoculant on vegetable waste compost quality.

The source segregated vegetable waste (VW) was used as main feedstock and locally available organic wastes, such as water hyacinth (WH), garden prune (GP) and sawdust (SD) were used as bulking agents (BAs) to make the compost stable and mature in combination with cow dung (CD) as a source of inoculant. Three trials (T1, T2 & T3) were performed with a compost ratio of 6:3:1 (VW:BA:CD) using different BAs. The initial C/N ratio of all the trials was maintained lesser than 23 and composted for 30 days (7 days in rotary drum reactor + 23 days windrowing). The ANOVA analysis indicated that the physico-chemical parameters varied significantly (p < .05) with the time of composting. It was also indicated that SD is the most performing BA for North-eastern region of India due to optimum germination index of 110% along with leachate management.