Anaerobic Bacterial Degradation of Kitchen Waste - a Review

Kitchen (food waste) was collected from hostels of Cancer Hospital & Research Institute (CHRI), Gwalior’s Mess as feedstock for bio-reactor which works as anaerobic digester system to produce biogas energy. Production of biogas ,used as energy source, will be more cost effective, eco-friendly, cut down on landfill waste, generate a high-quality renewable fuel, and reduce CH4 and CO2 emissions, and also bio-fertilizer which contains beneficial bacterial community. This bacterial community plays a major role in the regulation of soil properties on the basis of their biological activity. The absence of oxygen leads to controlled conversion of complex organic pollutions, mainly CH4 and CO2. Anaerobic treatment has favourable effects like removal of higher organic concentration, low sludge production, high pathogen removal, high biogas gas production and low energy consumption. The continuously fed digester requires addition of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) to maintain the alkalinity and pH at 7.0. For this purpose, we have prepared an excellent bacterial community which is applied into mixture of cow dung slurry along with the kitchen waste in bioreactor for CH4 production in large quantity. A combination of these, an excellent bacterial community, was used for biogas production at 37°C in small scale laboratory reactor of 10L capacity.