Avaliação da hidrólise alcalina da gordura sobre a biodegradação anaeróbia de soro de queijo

Abstract

The cheese whey represents the most important reject of the industry of dairy products, mainly due to its expressive generated volume. The cheese whey is a problematic substrate under the environmental point of view, presenting high amounts of carbohydrates, proteins and fats, giving it a chemical demand of oxygen of approximately a hundred times larger than the one of the domestic waste. An alternative for its treatment would be the anaerobic fermentation, which reduces its pollutant impact, making possible even the recovery of the energy from the formed biogas. However, the low biodegradation rate of the fats in the cheese whey difficulties the anaerobic treatment, reducing the mass transfer, leading to biomass loss and to the collapse of the reactor. In this context, this work had as objective to evaluate the effect of the preliminary stage from the alkaline hydrolyses of the fats in the anaerobic biodegradation of the cheese whey. A complet experimental design, being considered as the independent variables factors as time and the concentration of NaOH indicated the best hydrolyses conditions as 0,1% of NaOH, reaction time at 15h in 35°C and 200 rpm. In the study of the biodegradability of the cheese whey was used as inoculum a sludge colleted in a anaerobic reactor from the effluents treatment of a food industry. The COD removal and the biogas production were monitored by time, in different concentrations of the cheese whey solution in the basal medium. The removal of COD and the biogas production were higher in the experiments with the previously hydrolyzed solutions, especially for larger concentrations of cheese whey. These results shows that the alkaline hydrolyzes may be an alternative in the biological treatment of effluents with high fat concentration.