Effect of particle size on enhancement of biogas production from crop residue

Abstract

Crops such as wheat, rice, maize, sugarcane are major sources of high-calorific intake in form of carbohydrates to almost entire population of the world in one way or other. After harvesting these crops produce an abundant amount of crop residues like wheat straw, rice straw, husk, stalks, bagasse etc. which can be effectively utilized as a biomass energy resource. However, these crop residues are frequently burnt by the farmers in open fields causing air pollution. Crop residues being lignocellulosic biomass in nature falls under second-generation of biofuels. Lignocellulosic nature of crop residues needs to altered for efficient decomposition through anaerobic digestion. Physical pretreatment is an essential step which helps to increase the surface area of crop residue making the digestibility faster and more efficient. Therefore, this study was conducted to analyze the effect of size reduction of rice straw and bagasse on enhancement of biogas production. It has been observed that the biogas production increases by 3.18 times as the particle size of rice straw reduced from RS1 to RS2 and in case of bagasse enhancement of biogas production by 2.65 times was observed when particle size reduced from B1 to B2.