ASTM D5526 – 18 covers determination of the degree and rate of anaerobic biodegradation of plastic materials in an accelerated-landfill test environment. It consists of following steps:

1) selecting and analysing material for testing

2) obtaining a pretreated municipal-solid-waste fraction and a concentrated anaerobic inoculum from an anaerobic digester

3) exposing the material to an anaerobic static batch fermentation at more than 30% solids content

4) measuring total evolved biogas (CH₄ and CO₂) as function of time

5) removing the specimens for cleaning (optional), conditioning, testing, and reporting

6) assessing the degree of biodegradability

7) assessing the degree of biodegradability under less than optimum conditions.

The percentage of biodegradability is obtained by determining the precent of conversion of carbon from the test material to carbon in the gaseous phase (CH₄ and CO₂). This percentage of biodegradability will not include the amount of carbon from the test substance that is converted to cell biomass and that is not, in turn, metabolized to CH₄ and CO₂.

BPC Blue is a fully automated biodegradability testing system suitable for ASTM D5526. It allows for continuous and on-line monitoring of released biogas (CH₄ and CO₂) and is a fully integrated and automated system for sampling, analysing, recording, and generating reports. BPC Blue is the perfect analytical tool that offers standardised measurement procedures, data interpretations and reports.