Continuous hydrogen production from co-digestion of municipal food waste and kitchen wastewater in mesophilic anaerobic baffled reactor

This study was carried out to assess the impact of organic loading rate (OLR) on the performance of mesophilic anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR) for H2 production from a co-digestion of municipal food waste and kitchen wastewater. The reactor was operated at different organic loading rates (OLRs) of 29, 36 and 47 g CODtotal/L d. The hydraulic retention time (HRT) was kept constant at 1.6 d. The results showed that increasing the OLR from 29 to 36 g CODtotal/L d, leads to a significant (p □ 0.01) drop in the H2 production from 6.0 ± 0.5 to 5.4 ± 1.04 L H2/d, respectively. However, the H2 production remained at the same level of 5.3 ± 1.04 L H2/d at increasing the OLR from 36 to 47 g CODtotal/L d. The H2 generation was mainly due to conversion of COD (57%) and carbohydrate (81%). Protein and lipids conversion represents only 23.3% and 4.1% respectively for H2 production.