Anaerobic digestion of biomass for methane production: A review

Biological conversion of biomass to methane has received increasing attention in recent years. Hand- and mechanically-sorted municipal solid waste and nearly 100 genera of fruit and vegetable solid wastes, leaves, grasses, woods, weeds, marine and freshwater biomass have been explored for their anaerobic digestion potential to methane. In this review, the extensive literature data have been tabulated and ranked under various categories and the influence of several parameters on the methane potential of the feedstocks are presented. Almost all the land- and water-based species examined to date either have good digestion characteristics or can be pre-treated to promote digestion. This review emphasizes the urgent need for evaluating the inumerable unexplored genera of plants as potential sources for methane production.