Enhanced solid-state anaerobic digestion of corn stover by alkaline pretreatment

Alkaline pretreatment was applied to enhance biogas production from corn stover through solid-state anaerobic digestion. Different NaOH loadings (1%, 2.5%, 5.0% and 7.5% (w/w)) were tested for solid-state pretreatment of corn stover. Lignin degradation during pretreatment increased from 9.1% to 46.2% when NaOH concentration increased from 1.0% to 7.5%. The NaOH-pretreated corn stover was digested using effluent of liquid anaerobic digestion as inoculum and nitrogen source. NaOH loading of 1% did not cause significant improvement on biogas yield. The highest biogas yield of 372.4 L/kg VS was obtained with 5% NaOH-pretreated corn stover, which was 37.0% higher than that of the untreated corn stover. However, a higher NaOH loading of 7.5% caused faster production of volatile fatty acids during the hydrolysis and acidogenesis stages, which inhibited the methanogenesis. Simultaneous NaOH treatment and anaerobic digestion did not significantly improve the biogas production (P > 0.05).