Volatile fatty acid production dynamics during the acidification of pretreated olive mill wastewater (original) (raw)
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Environmental Engineering and Management Journal, 2013
A large variety of agro-wastes are actually investigated for their reliability as renewable sources: the possibility to employ some organic residues for the production of biomolecules, biofuels and biomaterials has fostered the born of the concept of second generation biorefineries, which differ from the first generation processes, since non dedicated crops are used as the feedstock. To this aim, Olive Mill Wastewaters (OMWs) are the most investigated wastes, due to their high organic content and to a high concentration of polyphenols, compounds that are natural antioxidant. If on the one hand OMWs are recalcitrant to biodegradation and their environmental impact can represent a serious issue, on the other hand these wastes show a biochemically interesting composition, rich of sugars, lipids, alcohols and organic acids. Recent studies have demonstrated that a lot of processes can be applied to OMWs, which can be exploited for the recovery of polyphenols, production of biofuels or ch...
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The hydrocarbon-based economy is moving at a large pace to a decarbonized sustainable bioeconomy based on biorefining all types of secondary carbohydrate-based raw materials. In this work, 50 g L−1 in COD of a mixture of food waste, brine and wastewater derived from a biodiesel production facility were used to produce organic acids, important building-blocks for a biobased industry. High salinity (12–18 g L−1), different reactors configuration operated in batch mode, and different initial pH were tested. In experiment I, a batch stirred reactor (BSR) at atmospheric pressure and a granular sludge bed column (GSBC) were tested with an initial pH of 5. In the end of the experiment, the acidification yield (ηa) was similar in both reactors (22–24%, w/w); nevertheless, lactic acid was in lower concentrations in BSR (6.3 g L−1 in COD), when compared to GSBC (8.0 g L−1 in COD), and valeric was the dominant acid, reaching 17.3% (w/w) in the BSR. In experiment II, the BSR and a pressurized b...
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Among agro-wastes, olive mill wastewater (OMW) truly qualifies as a high impact organic residue due to its biochemical-rich composition and high annual production. In the present investigation, dephenolized OMW (OMWdeph) was employed as the feedstock for a biotechnological two-stage anaerobic process dedicated to the production of biohydrogen and volatile fatty acids (VFAs), respectively. To this end, two identically configured packed-bed biofilm reactors were operated sequentially. In the first, the hydraulic retention time was set to 1 day, whereas in the second it was equal to 5 days. The rationale was to decouple the hydrolysis of the organic macronutrients held by the OMWdeph, so as to quantitatively generate a biogas enriched in H2 (first stage aim), for the acidogenesis of the residual components left after hydrolysis, to then produce a highly concentrated mixture of VFAs (second stage aim). Results showed that the generation of H2 and VFAs was effectively split, with carbohy...