Microbial Conversion of Food Waste: Volatile Fatty Acids Platform

Abstract A promising biological treatment of food waste is anaerobic digestion that has for long been used for the production of biogas, whose main application areas are production of electricity, transport fuel, and heat. The anaerobic digestion technology can also be utilized for producing short-chained volatile fatty acids (VFAs) that consist of up to six carbon atoms. These waste-derived VFAs have a higher market value than biogas and have the potential to be applied as substitutes to their petroleum-based equivalents in many manufacturing industries and bioprocesses presented in this chapter. Some of the research efforts to increase the production yields, including optimization of the anaerobic digestion process parameters such as pH, temperature, organic loading rate, and the hydraulic retention time, are highlighted. Moreover, proper separation and purification techniques that have recently been developed to recover the VFAs from the fermentation medium for further applications are addressed.