Biomethane production potential from restaurant food waste in megacities and project level-bottlenecks: A case study in Beijing

Djavan De Clercq, Zongguo Wen, Fei Fan and Luis Caicedo

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2016, vol. 59, issue C, 1676-1685

Abstract: A large amount of food waste in Chinese megacities goes to waste each year. In the Chinese context, “food waste” collectively refers to restaurant waste (the focus of our research), household kitchen waste and discarded expired food. The research aims to calculate the theoretical biomethane potential of restaurant food waste in our megacity case study, Beijing, and to evaluate project-level bottlenecks in anaerobic digestion facilities that treat food waste. The findings are as follows: (1) Beijing׳s estimated 2015 production of 956,300t of food waste could produce approximately 300 million Nm3 of CH4; (2) the operational bottlenecks in a pilot food waste anaerobic digestion facility include low biogas production, under-capacity, weak process monitoring and feedback control, inefficient biogas utilization, and excessive troubleshooting and downtime. These results confirm that urban anaerobic digestion pilot facilities that treat food waste are facing similar operational issues to agricultural anaerobic digestion projects that were built in the past. A comprehensive performance evaluation of new pilot projects in China is urgent to ensure that past mistakes are not being repeated on a massive scale.

Keywords: Food waste; Anaerobic digestion; Megacities; Biogas; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2015.12.323

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