abstract
Municipal solid waste (MSW) management is becoming a serious issue in all over the world. Anaerobic
digestion (AD) is one of the technologies to convert that waste into useful form of energy. But megacities
like Singapore having limited resources, cannot fulfill the cow dung or other animal manure requirements
in AD. Therefore there is a need to study critically the operating parameters and also the
pretreatment technologies available for treating the substrate so that one can get the maximum output
with limited input. To fulfill the need, the present paper deals with the review of various operating
parameters and their effects on AD. This paper also reviews different pretreatment methods including
mechanical, thermal, chemical and biological methods to improve the effectiveness of AD of MSW.