Effect of feed to microbe ratios on anaerobic digestion of Chinese cabbage waste under mesophilic and thermophilic conditions: Biogas potential and kinetic study

• Chinese cabbage waste (CCW) produced from kimchi factory was used for the test.
• The effect of F/M ratios on biogas production was tested at 35.5 °C and 55 °C.
• The first order kinetic model was evaluated for methane yield.
• Biogas production and VS removal increased with increase in F/M ratio from 0.5 to 2.0.
• The first-order kinetic model was in agreement with experimental results.

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of the feed-to-microbe (F/M) ratios on anaerobic digestion of Chinese cabbage waste (CCW) generated from a kimchi factory. The batch test was conducted for 96 days under mesophilic (36.5 °C) (Experiment I) and thermophilic (55 °C) conditions (Experiment II) at F/M ratios of 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0. The first-order kinetic model was evaluated for methane yield. The biogas yield in terms of volatile solids (VS) added increased from 591 to 677 mL/g VS under mesophilic conditions and 434 to 639 mL/g VS under thermophilic conditions when the F/M ratio increased from 0.5 to 2.0. Similarly, the volumetric biogas production increased from 1.479 to 6.771 L/L under mesophilic conditions and from 1.086 to 6.384 L/L under thermophilic conditions when F/M ratio increased from 0.5 to 2.0. The VS removal increased from 59.4 to 75.6% under mesophilic conditions and from 63.5 to 78.3% under thermophilic conditions when the F/M ratio increased from 0.5 to 2.0. The first-order kinetic constant (k, 1/day) decreased under the mesophilic temperature conditions and increased under thermophilic conditions when the F/M ratio increased from 0.5 to 2.0. The difference between the experimental and predicted methane yield was in the range of 3.4–14.5% under mesophilic conditions and in the range of 1.1–3.0% under thermophilic conditions. The predicted methane yield derived from the first-order kinetic model was in good agreement with the experimental results.