Enhanced performance on anaerobic digestion of biodegradable polymers for methane production

Abstract

Annually great volume of cigarette butts (CB) are discarded in the world. Cigarette is composed of filter, paper, leave. Filter of cigarette consists of cellulose acetate which is biodegradable polymer. However cellulose acetate has extremely slow degradation process under ambient condition. Anaerobic digestion could degrade organic materials of cigarette and convert them into bioenergy. The cellulose acetate of cigarette filter contains a high degree of carbon atoms which is great potential carbon source for biomethane. In this study, cigarette was pretreated at elevated temperature (90 ℃) under alkaline condition (pH 12) to enhance the biodegradability. Thermal alkaline pretreatment resulted in rapid hydrolysis rate of total cigarette and led to increased biomethane production. To identify the contribution of each components of CB to methane production, same pretreatment method and digestion were employed on those. Filter showed maximum methane production among three substrates. Alkaline thermal and thermal pretreatment on filter enhanced the biodegradability reducing 52 % and 14 % lag phase more than untreated one respectively.