Development of a novel fractal-like kinetic model for elucidating the effect of particle size on the mechanism of hydrolysis and biogas yield from ligno-cellulosic biomass

Abstract

The effect of particle size on hydrolysis and biogas production kinetics from a typical ligno-cellulosic biomass was assessed by studying the anaerobic co-digestion of fixed amount of rice husk and cow dung mixture using a newly developed fractal-like kinetic model. British Standard (BS) sieves were used to obtain varying particles size fractions ranging from 0.150 to 0.212 mm, 0.212–0.300 mm, 0.300–0.600 mm, 0.600–1.000 mm and 1.000–1.700 mm from oven dried, milled rice husk and pulverized, dried cow dung respectively. These particle size fractions from both biomass were mixed in a ratio of 1:1 after which, they were loaded into batch reactors and digested anaerobically at ambient conditions for 75 days. Hydrolysis of ligno-cellulosic biomass was observed to depend on the fractal exponent (h), which indexed the presence of inaccessible regions in ligno-cellulosic biomass. Also, hydrolysis was observed to depend on two other intrinsic factors that comprised of the initial hydrolytic rate ([Formula presented]ko′) and overall affinity constant (ko′So). Larger particle size fractions were associated with higher affinity but lower initial hydrolysis rate while, smaller particle size fractions were associated with lower affinity but higher initial hydrolysis rate. In addition, the fractal model compared favorably with the popular modified Gompertz equation.