Anaerobic digestion of giant reed for methane production

As a fast growing plant, giant reed has good potential to be used as a feedstock for methane production via anaerobic digestion (AD). The effect of total solids (TS) content, an AD operating parameter, was studied. Results showed that increasing TS from 8% to 38% decreased methane yield, due to the inhibition of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) and total ammonia nitrogen (TAN); while the maximum volumetric methane production was obtained at 20–23% TS. Comparison of solid-state AD (SS-AD) at 20% TS and liquid AD (L-AD) at 8% TS was conducted at feedstock to effluent (F/E) ratios of 2.0, 3.5, and 5.0. The best performance was achieved at an F/E of 2.0, with methane yields of 129.7 and 150.8 L-CH4/kg-VS for SS-AD and L-AD, respectively. Overall organic components were degraded by 17.7–28.5% and 24.0–26.6% in SS-AD and L-AD, respectively; among which cellulose showed the highest degradation rate and the highest contribution to methane production.