Anaerobic Digestion of Fruit and Vegetable Processing Wastes for Biogas Production

The effect of feeding different fruit and vegetable
wastes, mango, pineapple, tomato, jackfruit,
banana and orange, was studied in a 60-liter
digester by cycling each waste every fifth day in
order to operate the digester as and when there was
supply of feed. The characteristics of the anaerobically
digested fluid and digester performance in
terms of biogas production were determined at different
loading rates (LR) and at different hydraulic
retention times (HRT), and the maximum biogas
yield of 06 rrd/kg VS added was achieved at a 20-
day HR T and 40 kg TS m- 3day- 1 loading rate. The
hourly gas production was observed in the digesters
operated at 16 and 24 days HRT. The major yield
(74"5%) of gas was produced within 12 h of feeding
at a 16-day HRT whereas at a 24-day HRT only
59~93% of the total gas could be obtained at this
time.