摘要:Anaerobic fermentation is a complex, multistage biological process. This process may be controlled by analyzing parameters defining dry matter, organic dry matter and concentrations of volatile fatty acids. Traditional titration or gas chromatography methods may be applied to assay VFAs. These methods are time-consuming and costly; for this reason it was attempted to apply chemometric methods based on VIS-NIR spectrophotometry. Experimental material consisted of a mixture of maize silage and pig slurry, subjected to continuous fermentation in a digester of an agricultural biogas plant. For collected samples absorbance spectra were obtained by the transmission method at a wavelength of 400÷2170 nm. These data were used to construct PLS spectrophotometer calibration models to predict VFA contents in the substrate. The model with the best fit to the spectral data was obtained for samples of purified digestate, characterized by the coefficient of determination R2 of 0.81 and Root Mean Square Error of Cross-Validation RMSECV =211 mg·dm-3 .