Hydrolytic and acidogenic fermentation potential of food waste with source segregated feces-without-urine as co-substrate

This study explored a new approach to enhance VFA productivity from anaerobic co-digestion of food-waste (FW) with source-segregated brown-water (BW) [feces-without-urine]. Effort was made to separate urine and BW from the source (using no-mix-toilet) mainly to expedite further treatment and resource-recovery. Effect of alkaline-pH [B] and acclimatized acidogenic inoculum [C] on acidification efficiency was investigated and compared with raw FW + BW co-digestion [A]. Batch-assay results indicated that VFA productivity persists for 144-h with about 615%, 522% and 376% increase in VFA–COD, respectively for 3-conditions [A–C]; which accounted for 70%, 49% and 58% of CODs input, respectively. High butyric-acid was observed in [A] and [C], followed by acetic, propionic-acids; whereas, abundant acetic-acid (86% of TVFA) was observed in [B], which are the most favorable-forms for methane production or other value-added-products. For 144-h of acidification, this study validated the feasibility of maximizing VFA-yield by 7–12 times compared to FW or BW as a sole-substrate.