Anaerobic digestion of vegetable wastes to produce biogas as a substitute for LPG.

There are abundances of vegetable wastes in a traditional market, these easily degraded wastes could polluted the environment if not treated wisely. Vegetable wastes could undergo anaerobic digestion process to produce biogas and minimise the wastes. Biogas is an alternative energy source to replace LPG, a fossil energy source widely used in Indonesia. The waste from anaerobic digestion may be further treated to produce organic fertiliser. This study aimed to examines anaerobic digestion of vegetables wastes collected from a traditional market in Makassar, Indonesia, to produce biogas. In this research, three vegetable wastes, namely, cabbage, spinach and kangkoong were shredded, mixed with a starter of cow dungs and water, then fed to the anaerobic digester with ratios of a starter to organic waste of 1:3. The process was left for several days. The biogas produced from the process was collected and analysed for its characteristic. It was found that cabbage and spinach wastes yielded biogas with quite similar pressure ca 120 KPa, whereas kangkoong yieldedd quite lower biogas pressure. The biogas produced from the digestion of vegetable wastes from a biodigester with a capacity of 150 liters for 20 days could be combusted for 1807 s with a blue-clear flame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]