Characterization and analysis of fish waste as feedstock for biogas production

Abstract Fish waste (FW) is biodegradable waste that remains underutilized and causes a problem to the environment since the existing disposal techniques result in health risks and environmental pollution. FW has significant potential for producing biogas that decreases the reliance on fossil fuels because it contains easily biodegradable organic matter. The physicochemical analysis of the FW such as moisture content of 61.78%, volatile solids (VS) of 93.94%, total solids of 38.21%, ash content (AC) of 0.52%, total organic carbon of 54.2%, total Kjeldahl nitrogen of 9.2% and carbon to nitrogen (C/N) ratio of 5.89% were considered and analyzed in this research. In addition, the methane potential was determined and obtained using gas detector. The results shown that the methane (CH4) content in FW was 50.12%, which was the potential feedstock of FW for biogas production. Nevertheless, the VS of FW was high, which was good for this feedstock to be easily digested as the sign of producing biogas and demonstrates 99.9985% of performance rate. Finally, the FW had a lower C/N ratio compared with other biogas production waste. Future work needs to consider co-digestion with higher C/N ratio feedstocks.