Inhibition of patchouli oil for anaerobic digestion and enhancement in methane production using reverse membrane bioreactors

Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2018

Patchouli oil is an essential oil extracted from aromatic crop Pogostemon cablin and is widely used in perfumery industry, food industry, or even as medicine. The leaves have 4.6% oil that is extracted by steam but leaves an enormous amount of wastes with ca 0.8% oil. The fresh patchouli plants and its waste were examined in this study for biogas production. The methane yield of these materials were 86 and 179 NmL CH4/gVS, respectively. The patchouli oil showed antibacterial effect, where with the addition of 0.05, 0.5 and 5 g/l patchouli oil reduced biogas production by 16.2 %. 27.2% and more than 100% after 50 days digestion.