Evaluation of methane production features and kinetics of Bougainvillea spectabilis Willd waste under mesophilic conditions

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate and evaluate the biomethane potential (BMP) of Bougainvillea spectabilis Willd waste in Yunnan, China, when subjected to mesophilic anaerobic digestion (AD). Three different categories of plant waste investigated were as follows: the flowers, leaves and stems of B. spectabilia. These three portions were assessed for their BMP in a laboratoryscale batch anaerobic digester for a period of 60 days at 30±0.1°C temperature. The results show that maximum daily methane yield of B. spectabilia’s flowers, leaves and stems were 65.95, 56.29 and 18.8 mL/(g.VS), respectively. Moreover, the research used substrate kinetics, including the Gompertz equation, the logistic equation and the transference function to analyze the AD process. All models fit the experimental data with R²>0.993. However, the Gompertz equation presented the best agreement in the fitting progress.

Key words: Bougainvillea spectabilis Willd, biomethane potential, anaerobic digestion, mathematical model.