Effect of canola oil to reduce the scum formations

Abstract

The scum is a colligation of slow degrading substrate formed on topmost portion of digester with its gas, metastable liquid and foam contents it impacts seriously on biogas plant economically, environmentally and biologically. Scum formations hamper the yield of biogas generation, methane contents, slows the degradation process and stops the burnable biogas formation. The operational plant performance drops rapidly. The experimentations were conducted with canola oil, natural Coconut oil and ENO to evaluate the defoaming potentials on lab scale model. The research concluded that the canola oil is best chemical additive which reported better defoaming potential of 32% at peak, higher yield of biogas, improves methane contents and stabilizes the pH for better biomethanation.