Minimizing asynchronism to improve the performances of anaerobic co-digestion of food waste and corn stover

To investigate the existence of the asynchronism during the anaerobic co-digestion of different substrates, two typical substrates of food waste and corn stover were anaerobically digested with altering organic loadings (OL). The results indicated that the biodegradability of food waste and corn stover was calculated to be 81.5% and 55.1%, respectively, which was main reason causing the asynchronism in the co-digestion. The asynchronism was minimized by NaOH-pretreatment for corn stover, which could improve the biodegradability by 36.6%. The co-digestion with pretreatment could increase the biomethane yield by 12.2%, 3.2% and 0.6% comparing with the co-digestion without pretreatment at C/N ratios of 20, 25 and 30 at OL of 35 g-VS/L, respectively. The results indicated that the digestibility synchronism of food waste and corn stover was improved through enhancing the accessibility and digestibility of corn stover. The biomethane production could be increased by minimizing the asynchronism of two substrates in co-digestion.