Chemical pretreatments of organic fraction of municipal solid waste for a sustainable valorization

Organic solid waste gains a lot of consideration in waste management due to both its potential environmental impacts and its suitability to achieve sustainability objectives. One of most widely applied treatment of organic solid waste is the anaerobic digestion, which also promotes renewable energy production. However, specific pretreatments of the substrates are needed to overcome the hydrolytic limiting step and to improve the quality of useful components during the process. Some of these pretreatments allow to convert the substrates in byproducts, which could be properly employed in industrial processes. The aim of this work in studying the applicability of organic solvent pretreatment to convert organic solid waste in value-added chemicals. Differently composed organic samples were prepared and treated by acetic acid under various operating condition. Chemicalphysical characteristics, biodegradability and structural changes were investigated to evaluate the efficiency of the pretreatment. The correlations among the resulting data were discussed in order to propose alternative and suitable uses of pretreated organic waste.