Enhancement of Biogas Production by Cellulytic Bacteria from Bagasse Using Methanogenesis

Abstract

Energy is essential to meet the basic needs of life, to increase amenities and modernization. The main sources of energy that are met our energy demands are mineral oil, coal, natural gas and firewood. These conventional energy sources are being depleted day by day. So renewable, alternative and effective energy sources should be explored for our country as well as whole world. The production of biogas serves as an alternative energy source. The main objective of our research work was enhancement of biogas production by cellulytic bacteria from bagasse using methanogens. Five liters capacity glass reactors were used. Five sets of batch modes anaerobic digesters were used under laboratory condition. Bagasse was used as feed materials. Bagasse is the by-product of sugar mill and it was used as raw materials for paper production in our paper mills. Now it is discarded and creates a problem of sugar mills to use and manage bagasse. The raw materials were diluted with supply water in the ratio of 1 to 9 for bagasse. The characteristics of the influent slurry in term of Total Solid (T.S)%, Volatile Solid (V.S)%, P H and temperature ranges were determined every 7 days intervals for bagasse. The percentage of methane of biogas obtained from bagasse was 80%. The S 1 strain (Monococcus sp.) and S3 strain (Streptococcus sp.) of cellulytic bacteria produced 3.45×10 -3 (m 3 /day/kg feedstock) biogas and 3.85×10 -3 (m 3 /day/kg feedstock) biogas at 22 th day respectively whereas control produced 2.85×10 -3 (m 3 /day/kg feedstock) biogas at 34 th day by using bagasse as feedstock. The results clearly demonstrated that the rate of biogas production was increased by S 1 strain and S 3 strain of cellulytic bacteria. The cumulative biogas production was found 54.20×10 -3 m 3 , 66.21×10 -3 m 3 and 61.59×10 -3 m 3 for control, S 1 strain and S3 strain of cellulytic bacteria, respectively. In conclusion, results obtained from the present research work can be used to design biogas reactor in the field conditions to operate batch and semi-continuous mode for disposal management of sugar mills and thereby contribute a lot of in our fuel and fertilizer sectors.