Abstract

Food waste with high carbohydrate content is considered as a suitable substrate for fermentation of methane gas. In this study, co-digestion of poultry manure (PM) and food waste (FW) was used. Response surface methodology (RSM) and artificial neural network (ANN) were applied to optimize parameters of co-digestion of PM and FW at different ratios, initial pH values and temperatures. A comparative analysis was done using RSM and ANN in a predictive model of the experimental data obtained in accordance with the central composite design. The combined effects of the independent variables (ratio, pH and temperature) as the most significant parameters of methane fermentation of PM and FW were investigated. Optimization using RSM and ANN showed a good fit between the experimental and the predicted data as elucidated by the coefficient of determination with R² values of 0.991 and 0.998, respectively. Quadratic RSM predicted the maximum methane yield to be 537 mL CH₄/g VS at the optimal conditions; ratio 80:20 (PM : FW); temperature 35 °C; and initial pH 7.11. The maximum predicted methane yield by the ANN model was 535.82 mL CH₄/g VS at the following conditions; ratio of poultry manure to food waste 80:20; temperature 35 °C; and pH 7.00. The verification experiments successfully produced 538 mL CH₄/g VS within 14 days of incubation. These experiments indicated that the developed model was successfully used to predict the fermentable methane production.

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