Increasing biogas production of anaerobic fermentation with cellulase pretreatment on organic fraction of municipal solid waste

When complex organic matter was used as feedstock in the process of anaerobic fermentation, the rate-limiting stage generally was thought of as the first stage, namely hydrolytic stage. Hence, if feedstock was hydrolyzed before it was loaded into a digester, the efficiency of anaerobic fermentation would be improved greatly. Based on this ideal, a cellulase pre-hydrolysis of organic fraction of municipal solid waste(OFMSW) to enhance biogas production was conducted in this paper. Firstly the single-factor experiment was used to investigate the effect of cellulase additive amount, hydrolytic temperature, hydrolytic time, pH and substrate concentration on the degree of hydrolysis. And then the hydrolyzed OFMSW was used as the substrate to investigate the influence of these hydrolytic factors on the batch biogas production. The result showed that, as compared to the control group (without cellulase pre-hydrolysis), the period of rapid biogas production in different experimental groups occurred ahead about 3–7 days, the biogas yield of VS was increased from 32.77% to 75.08%, and the methane yield of VS was increased from 35.35% to 113.19%.