Food waste as a resource: grinding, dilution, and storage as a pretreatment strategy to produce fermentation intermediates

Daly, S.; Usack, J. G.; Harroff, L. A.; Booth, J. G.; Keleman, M. P.; Angenent, L. T.

doi:10.1101/2020.04.27.064808

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bioRxiv · 10.1101/2020.04.27.064808

Food waste as a resource: grinding, dilution, and storage as a pretreatment strategy to produce fermentation intermediates

Daly, S.·Usack, J. G.·Harroff, L. A.·Booth, J. G.·Keleman, M. P.·Angenent, L. T.

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Abstract

In several states of the U.S., one measure to mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions has been to ban food wastes from landfills. As a result, U.S.-based companies are now providing decentralized food-waste management systems for supermarkets and restaurants, which include storage as a slurry. It is unclear, however, which storage conditions (factors) would affect the spontaneous microbial activity, resulting in a different fermentation product spectra, and how this would affect further post-treatment. Here, we performed two experiments to mimic: 1) storage and 2) subsequent anaerobic digestion. For the food-waste storage system, we designed a mixed-level fractional factorial analysis with 12 experimental combinations, including separating food waste into: carbohydrate-rich, lipid-rich, and protein-rich food waste. We found that all factors that we tested correlated with the fermentation product spectra, but that especially the factors: i) storage temperature; ii) food-waste composition; and iii) storage time affected the fermentation outcome. We observed that relatively low pH levels of 3-4, which were achieved due to rapid lactic acid accumulation by microbial activity during storage, coincided with greater lactate production at a maximum chemical oxygen demand (COD) selectivity of 90%. This provides an opportunity to optimize lactate production, which is ideal for subsequent methane or chemical production. TOC/Abstract graphic O_FIG_DISPLAY_L [Figure 1] M_FIG_DISPLAY C_FIG_DISPLAY

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Daly, S., Usack, J. G., Harroff, L. A., Booth, J. G., Keleman, M. P., Angenent, L. T.. 2020-04-28. Food waste as a resource: grinding, dilution, and storage as a pretreatment strategy to produce fermentation intermediates. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.27.064808

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