Effect of Initial pH and Organic Matter Concentration on Production of Volatile Organic Acids Through Acidogenesis of Sugarcane Vinasse

ABSTRACT Sugarcane vinasse is an industrial liquid waste generated in great amounts in Brazilian ethanol industries. Nowadays its main use occurs at sugarcane crops, where vinasse is applied as a nutrient source for fertirrigation. However, continued use of vinasse in soil can cause several environmental impacts. So, aiming to provide a more environmentally friendly destination to the effluent, the goal of this work was to investigate the acidogenesis using a synthetic vinasse as substrate, focusing on the effects of initial pH and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) on short chain organic acids (SCOAs) concentrations. Synthetic vinasse was prepared at laboratory taking some real sugarcane vinasse composition given in previous works as references. So, major contribution presented here is the investigation on obtaining high added-value SCOAs from a simulated effluent. Cattle manure sludge was utilized as inoculum to promote the conversion of carbohydrate (sucrose, Suc) in synthetic vinasse into SCOAs in batch reactors during a total incubation time of 72 h. Acidogenesis profiles have shown that concentration of lactic acid (HLa) was prevailing among all metabolites, indicating that process followed through an essentially lactic route. Furthermore, considerable concentrations of propionic, acetic and isobutyric acids were also verified at some specific operation times, while solventogenesis was not detected at all. The greatest peak of lactate content was 4.96 g HLa L −1 , observed under initial pH 6.0 and 25 g COD L −1 , at 16 h. Maximum of lactate productivity was 332.10 g HLa L −1 h −1 at 8 h, associated to a yield of 189.14 g HLa (g Suc) −1 , under initial pH 7.5 and 20 g COD L −1 .