Solid-state co-digestion of expired dog food and corn stover for methane production.

Expired dog food was co-digested with corn stover for biogas production via solid-state anaerobic digestion (SS-AD) at feedstock-to-effluent (F/E) ratios of 2, 4, and 6 using effluent from a sewage sludge digester as inoculum. Degradation of the main components in dog food and corn stover was measured. Higher methane yields were obtained at lower F/E ratios and at higher percentages of dog food in the substrate. The highest methane yield of 304.4 L/kg VS(feed) was obtained for the substrate containing 50% corn stover and 50% dog food, which was an increase of 229% and 109% compared to digesting corn stover and dog food alone, respectively. Co-digestion of corn stover with dog food reduced the start-up time and volatile fatty acid (VFA) accumulation, but decreased the cellulose and xylan degradation of corn stover.