Bio-Refining of Carbohydrate-Rich Food Waste for Biofuels

Hoang-Tuong Nguyen Hao, Obulisamy Parthiba Karthikeyan and Kirsten Heimann
Additional contact information
Hoang-Tuong Nguyen Hao: College of Marine and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University, Townsville 4811, Queensland, Australia
Obulisamy Parthiba Karthikeyan: College of Marine and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University, Townsville 4811, Queensland, Australia
Kirsten Heimann: College of Marine and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University, Townsville 4811, Queensland, Australia

Energies, 2015, vol. 8, issue 7, 1-15

Abstract: The global dependence on finite fossil fuel-derived energy is of serious concern given the predicted population increase. Over the past decades, bio-refining of woody biomass has received much attention, but data on food waste refining are sorely lacking, despite annual and global deposition of 1.3 billion tons in landfills. In addition to negative environmental impacts, this represents a squandering of valuable energy, water and nutrient resources. The potential of carbohydrate-rich food waste (CRFW) for biofuel (by Rhodotorulla glutinis fermentation) and biogas production (by calculating theoretical methane yield) was therefore investigated using a novel integrated bio-refinery approach. In this approach, hydrolyzed CRFW from three different conditions was used for Rhodotorulla glutinis cultivation to produce biolipids, whilst residual solids after hydrolysis were characterized for methane recovery potential via anaerobic digestion. Initially, CRFW was hydrolysed using thermal- (Th), chemical- (Ch) and Th-Ch combined hydrolysis (TCh), with the CRFW-leachate serving as a control (Pcon). Excessive foaming led to the loss of TCh cultures, while day-7 biomass yields were similar (3.4–3.6 g dry weight (DW) L ?1 ) for the remaining treatments. Total fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) content of R. glutinis cultivated on CRFW hydrolysates were relatively low (~6.5%) but quality parameters ( i.e ., cetane number, density, viscosity and higher heating values) of biomass extracted biodiesel complied with ASTM standards. Despite low theoretical RS-derived methane potential, further research under optimised and scaled conditions will reveal the potential of this approach for the bio-refining of CRFW for energy recovery and value-added co-product production.

Keywords: anaerobic digestion; biodiesel; fatty acid methyl ester (FAME); fermentation; Rhodotorula glutinis; yeast (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/8/7/6350/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/8/7/6350/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:8:y:2015:i:7:p:6350-6364:d:51642

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().