IMPROVING BIOGAS PRODUCTION FROM ORGANIC AND AGRICULTURAL WASTES USING WASTEWATER AND STARTER SLURRY

Abstract

Anaerobic digestion is a well-known technique for waste management which could have constituted health hazard as well as environmental pollution. To enhance the biogas production, Starter Digestate (SD) by 5% of digester volume (T2) and Agricultural Wastewater (AW) with SD (T3) were performed on raw materials of: Cattle Dung (CD), Poultry Droppings (PD), Sugar beet Leaves (SL) and Water Hyacinth (WH) compared with blank test (T1) (Tap water) under different fermentation mixtures in order to study their effects on biogas and methane production, total nitrogen and pH. Results indicated that using agricultural wastewater and starter digestate 5% (T3) acheived the highest biogas production, methane percentage and total nitrogen comparing with the other treatments. With respect to fermentation mixtures, mixture of 50% SL + 50% WH (B) gave the highest methane percentage (77%), while mixture of 50% PD + 25 % SL + 25% WH (D) produced high concentration of N (5.3%) as a rich fertilizer with an average biogas production (778 mL/day) through fermentation period of 24 days.