A Critical Review of Challenges Faced by Converting Food Waste to Bioenergy Through Anaerobic Digestion and Hydrothermal Liquefaction

The conventional approaches for handling food waste has been incineration, composting, landfilling, and anaerobic digestion for producing biogas. In light of organic waste bans and newly discovered presence of per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS) in food, food packaging materials, and compost, this review provides a critical summary of what has been investigated and reported and what needs to be considered when choosing suitable pathways for food waste. In addition to the fundamental principles inherent to anaerobic digestion and hydrothermal liquefaction, challenges for each process are identified followed by discussion of potential solutions to resolve the bottlenecks.

Automated summary

This review discusses the conventional methods for handling food waste as well as new challenges such as the presence of PFAS in compost and food packaging materials. It also identifies the challenges inherent to anaerobic digestion and hydrothermal liquefaction processes while offering potential solutions to overcome these obstacles.