Electro-fermentation enhances methane production from high-carbon potato starch wastewater

Abstract

With the development of the potato starch industry, the output of potato starch wastewater has increased rapidly. In terms of the characteristics of potato industry starch wastewater, it was heavily polluted and difficult to degrade, this paper proposes to use the method of electro-fermentation to efficiently treat potato starch wastewater with high COD concentration to realize resource conversion. Under the constant potential control of -1.0 V, the methane yield was significantly increased (maximum 1254 mL/d), and the cumulative methane production increased by 43%. The COD degradation rate reached 90.56%, an increase of 66.53%. Electro-fermentation can solve the bottleneck of anaerobic digestion and is an emerging technology.