Comparative study on factors affecting anaerobic digestion of agricultural vegetal residues

Adrian Eugen Cioabla,Ioana Ionel,Gabriela-Alina Dumitrel,Francisc Popescu

doi:10.1186/1754-6834-5-39

Adrian Eugen Cioabla, Ioana Ionel + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/1754-6834-5-39

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Abstract

BackgroundPresently, different studies are conducted related to the topic of biomass potential to generate through anaerobic fermentation process alternative fuels supposed to support the existing fossil fuel resources, which are more and more needed, in quantity, but also in quality of so called green energy. The present study focuses on depicting an optional way of capitalizing agricultural biomass residues using anaerobic fermentation in order to obtain biogas with satisfactory characteristics.. The research is based on wheat bran and a mix of damaged ground grains substrates for biogas production.ResultsThe information and conclusions delivered offer results covering the general characteristics of biomass used , the process parameters with direct impact over the biogas production (temperature regime, pH values) and the daily biogas production for each batch relative to the used material.ConclusionsAll conclusions are based on processing of monitoring process results , with accent on temperature and pH influence on the daily biogas production for the two batches. The main conclusion underlines the fact that the mixture batch produces a larger quantity of biogas, using approximately the same process conditions and input, in comparison to alone analyzed probes, indicating thus a higher potential for the biogas production than the wheat bran substrate.Adrian Eugen Cioabla, Ioana Ionel, Gabriela-Alina Dumitrel and Francisc Popescu contributed equally to this work

Highlights

Different studies are conducted related to the topic of biomass potential to generate through anaerobic fermentation process alternative fuels supposed to support the existing fossil fuel resources, which are more and more needed, in quantity, and in quality of so called green energy
Anaerobic digestion consists of four biochemical steps: hydrolysis - hydrolytic bacteria remove polymers to monomers; acidogenesis acidogenic bacteria remove monomers to short carboxylic acid, CO2, hydrogen and alcohol; acetogenesis - the products of the previous phase are removed to acetic acid; methanogenesis - methane is built of the acetic acid [1,2,3,4]
Based on the two series of experiments and results, the mix of wheat and corn kernels proved to be more suited for biogas production than the wheat bran batch, for both one considering the general parameter variation in time and the produced biogas quantities

Summary

Introduction

Different studies are conducted related to the topic of biomass potential to generate through anaerobic fermentation process alternative fuels supposed to support the existing fossil fuel resources, which are more and more needed, in quantity, and in quality of so called green energy. The present study focuses on depicting an optional way of capitalizing agricultural biomass residues using anaerobic fermentation in order to obtain biogas with satisfactory characteristics. Due to the complexity of the bioconversion processes, many factors affecting the performances of an anaerobic digester were analyzed and depicted [6,7]. These can be divided in three main classes: (i) feedstock characteristics, (ii) reactor design and (iii) operational conditions. Temperature and pH are the most important parameters, the research was directed especially to these

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