Anaerobic Co-Digestion of Tannery Fleshing and Fecal Sludge for Enhancing Biogas Production: A Sustainable Approach for Waste to Energy

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-884-4_56How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Anerobic Co-Digestion; Tannery Waste; Fecal Sludge; Waste to Energy; Waste Management; SDG7

Abstract

Fecal Sludge (FS), a byproduct of sanitation systems, and Tannery Fleshing (TF), a solid waste from leather production processes, are considered as two of the most crucial environmental challenges attributed to their high organic load, odor and high potential for contamination. The Central Effluent Treatment Plant at the Savar Tannery Estate (STE) can process only 62.5% of the total waste generated, necessitating alternative solutions to minimize pollution. Here comes Anaerobic Digestion (AD) with a potential approach to manage these wastes properly since it reduces contamination along with the production of renewable energy. AD is a natural biochemical process where bacteria break down organic matter and convert it into combustible biogas (mainly CH₄ and CO₂) in absence of oxygen. This study aims to investigate the feasibility of Anaerobic Co-Digestion (AcoD) of TF and FS as a possible solution for proper waste management evaluating the overall performance of the 10 reactors Cos 1 to Cos 5 (each of them were duplicated) with different mixing ratios. TF was collected from STE, and the rest was sourced from local availability. The experiment is conducted under mesophilic conditions (35℃) for 35 days which is monitored routinely by extensive laboratory tests. For instance, pH, Total Solids, Volatile Solids, Moisture Content, Alkalinity, COD removal efficiency, Volatile Fatty Acids (VFAs, in terms of acetic acid) etc. each underwent triplicate testing and analysis. The results revealed that the pH (6.6 - 7.3) and alkalinity (2100 - 5200 mg/L as CaCO₃) remained stable within the optimal range with VFAs stabilizing after being increased primarily. COD removal efficiency was observed to be increasing gradually as the organic matter was being decomposed into gases, and the reactor Cos 4 (78.46%) was the most efficient. It emphasizes co-digestion since the reactors Cos 1 and Cos 2 exhibit lower gas production in comparison to Cos 4 which demonstrated the highest amount of cumulative gas production (average 0.127 mL/day/mL of total substrate). This could be attributed to a balanced CN ratio and increased microbial activity facilitated by the inoculum eventually assisting in the mitigation of various inhibitory factors resulting in overall stability. These findings highlight the potential of AcoD of TF and FS as a sustainable solution in the field of waste management. It also demonstrated that co-digestion enhances biogas production to almost 35-40 percent higher than mono digestion. Implementing this approach will reduce environmental hazards while generating renewable energy, offering a viable solution for waste management challenges.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Tanvir Ahammed
AU  - Shilpy Rani Basak
AU  - Ahmad Hasan Nury
AU  - Md. Imran Kabir
AU  - Md. Hasibul Islam Dhrubo
AU  - Pollobi Rani Das
AU  - Sabrina Afrin
AU  - Srijon Das Swarup
AU  - Arup Pal
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/11/18
TI  - Anaerobic Co-Digestion of Tannery Fleshing and Fecal Sludge for Enhancing Biogas Production: A Sustainable Approach for Waste to Energy
BT  - Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Engineering Research, Innovation, and Education 2025 (ICERIE 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 467
EP  - 474
SN  - 2352-5401
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-884-4_56
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-884-4_56
ID  - Ahammed2025
ER  -