Produção de metano a partir de resíduos alimentares do Restaurante Universitário do Campus do Pici.

• Autor(a) principal: Lira Filho, Pedro de Sousa
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Trabalho de conclusão de curso
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC)
• Texto Completo: http://www.repositorio.ufc.br/handle/riufc/45556
• topic: Biodigestão; Metano; Resíduo alimentar; Resíduos orgânicos; Biogás

Biodigestion is one of the most effective methods for the treatment of organic waste whose main characteristic is the production of biogas. The objective of this study was to evaluate the methane production through biodigestion of food waste during a period of 100 days. Among the motivations for this research is the great waste of food and a viability of treatment of organic solid waste. The study was carried out in two reactors (R1 and R2) with a capacity of 60L each, using septic tank sludge from Desentupidora e Limpa Fossa Estrela do Sol as inoculum and fed with organic waste from the University Restaurant of the Federal University of Ceará, located in Campus do Pici. In R1 was initially added an organic load of 16gO2/L and in R2 it was added 44gO2/L. The analyzed parameters were pH, total alkalinity, volatile fatty acids, total solids, total volatile solids, COT%, NTK, N% and COD. The biodigestors showed ideal microbial activity reaching stable values up to 40 days from inoculation and it stabilized around day 80. Two portions of 1kg of feed residue were added in both reactors around the 50th and the 70th day of operation. From this moment up to 80 days of operation, the reactors presented a higher substrate removal efficiency reaching values close to 80.69% and 69.05% of COD removal and 56.8% and 53.38% of STV removal in reactors 1 and 2, respectively. During the research, the values of alkalinity and AGV tended to increase, influencing the pH values, which were controlled by adding bicarbonate. The maximum volume of biogas generated in the biodigesters were 15.26L for R1 and 15.24L for R2, with R1 having a better stability. As for the percentage of non-biogas methane, R1 presented the highest value, with 62.9% versus 53% of R2. Therefore, in spite of the fluctuations in the values of some analysis, the biogas produced presented a satisfactory quality which allowed it to be used to generate electricity. Hence, one can conclude that it is viable to produce biogas with optimum percentages of methane by using biodigesters and that it can be used for the purpose of producing electricity. However, the inoculum type should be better evaluated as well as how the amount of food residue used in the reactor influences the production of biogas. The reason being that, in the present work, the organic load influenced the total amount of biogas produced, because during those 100 days of experiment the biodigester that produced more biogas and higher methane contents were the ones that had a lower organic load.