Browsing by Author "Edwin N.Richard, Edwin"

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    Pre-treatment of banana leaves with alkaline banana winery bottle-washing wastewater to improve the anaerobic digestion process
    (Springer, 2022-04-26) Edwin N.Richard, Edwin
    This study assessed the effectiveness of alkaline banana winery bottle-washing wastewater (ABW) as an alternative pre-treatment to improve hydrolysis rate and methane yield from banana leaves (BLs) wastes. The pre-treatment was carried out by soaking banana leaves in ABW for 48 h. The anaerobic digestion (AD) process was performed in batch reactors under the mesospheric temperature of 37 °C for 60 days. The pre-treatment results showed that the lignin concentrations in the pre-treated BL reduced by 4%, making it easier to digest. After the AD process, the hydrolysis rate (Kh) in the pre-treated BL was 0.02 d-1 higher than in the un-pre-treated BL (Kh = 0.003 d-1). The ABW pre-treatment significantly improved (P<0.05) the cumulative methane yield in BL. The pre-treated BL resulted in a high cumulative methane yield of 231 mL CH4 /g VS than un-pre-treated BL (46 mL CH4 /g VS). The volatile solids reduction in the pre-treated BL was 32.9% which was about 1.6 times higher than 20.8% in the un-pre-treated BL. Results indicated that alkaline pretreatment with banana winery bottle-washing wastewater could be an inexpensive alternative pre-treatment of BL and other lignocellulosic substrates before the AD process to improve biogas yield.