Optimizing Anaerobic Digestion of Tannery Fleshings with Different Inoculums Using Biochemical Methane Potential Test and Mathematical Modelling

The present experimental set-up study of tannery fleshings with different inoculum batch sizes, was carried out for an hydraulic retention time of 50 days to check the capability of anaerobic digestion. Biogas production was between 10,102.5 and 14,505 ml/day. The first-order and modified Gompertz models were calibrated using experimental data. For kinetic analysis of biogas production, modified Gompertz models and basic first-order kinetics were employed. In each instance, the kinetic parameters, substrate biogas yield potential, maximal biogas production rate, lag phase time, coefficient of determination and root mean square error were calculated. The model parameters were estimated using the nonlinear regression approach made possible by IBM SPSS software 25.0. Both the models fitted/predicted the experimental data with over 99% accuracy (R² = 0.990–0.999).