Research Article Open Access

Quality of kitchen waste generated at VIT University, Vellore

Abstract

Disposal of kitchen waste is a serious environmental problem all around the world as these wastes are generated in large quantities in highly populated and urban areas and due to its inappropriate disposal and lack of reuse. India has number of universities having large campuses in which they have hostels, colleges, messes cafeteria and staff colonies. They generate large amount of organic waste. Lots of money and manpower is required for its safe disposal. The aim of this investigation is to analyze the feasibility to create an organic waste processing facility in VIT University to produce biogas which will be more cost effective, eco-friendly, and reduce carbon dioxide & methane emissions. The present investigation involves theoretical and experimental estimation of biogas from kitchen waste of the students mess in university campus. The anaerobic fermentation of kitchen waste such as mixed food waste, uncooked waste and fruit waste was attempted using plastic digesters of 20 liter capacity. During this period, the temperature, solar radiation has been measured. All collected biodegradable food waste samples were used without mashing and shredding to homogenous size to find out the percentage of organic material broken down in that condition. Proximate and ultimate analysis for theoretical estimation has been made. We found that from experimental results biogas yield is 0.16834m3/kg. However, using ultimate analysis theoretical estimation indicates biogas yield is 0.9689m3/kg. This indicates that, there is a large gap between theoretical estimation and experimental results in the yield of biogas because no shredding has been done.

Aslam AM, Aleem Abdullah M

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