Simulation of anaerobic digesters for the non-uniform loading of biowaste generated from an educational institution

Abstract

The environmental impacts of conven-tional energy sources and the importance given to re-newable energy technologies lead to the use of biogas in a number of applications such as power generation, heating and refrigeration. The quantity and quality of biogas depend on the ingredients and their composi-tions in the biowaste. In this present work, analytical and experimental studies have been conducted to pre-dict the generation of methane from the biowastes produced in an educational institution where the availability of biowaste is not uniform throughout an academic year. The Anaerobic Digestion Model 1 (ADM1) is used for analytical studies, and four port-able anaerobic digesters, manufactured by fibre-rein-forced plastic, are used in the experimental investiga-tion. The observations show that the biogas produced from the wastes available in the educational institu-tion could substitute 30 to 35% of the conventional cooking energy used inside the campus, and average methane contents in the biogas produced from cow dung, rice waste, mixed rice waste and vegetable waste are 58.01 %, 51.96 %, 54.85 %, and 52.28 % respectively. It is also observed that the yield and the quality of biogas are influenced by the uniformity in organic loading.