UNIVERSITY OF MAURITIUS DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

Author: HEMANT MUNBOD

Supervisor: Dr. DINESH SURROOP

In Mauritius, there is quite a bit of ideological interest in anaerobic digestion and biogas production, particularly from intensive farmers, but there are not many examples of digesters in operation. The reasons why this concept is not being realized more could be a number of possible reasons such as the capital cost of setting up an anaerobic digester project, a lack of working models and / or a lack of a source of ideas to base individual projects on. The purpose of this project was to develop a small scale working prototype possibly suited to operate on the average farm. The focus of this project was the production of combustible biogas. The main objective of this research is to employ anaerobic digestion process as a sustainable technology for minimizing the animal solids waste and to provide the renewable source of energy as well as to reduce the potential greenhouse gases emission.

2. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

3. METHODOLOGY

DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION

- Availability of materials. - Mixing system. - Biogas purification system. - Biogas measuring system.

A). To assess the potential of biogas production from cow dung.

B). To construct a pilot-scale anaerobic digester

START-UP
- Determination of characteristics of substrate - Estimate the optimum amount of mixture of inoculum, water and substrate. - Safety consideration.

D). Quantify the biogas requirements for a houseful month for cooking purposes as compared to LPG cylinders

C). To analyze the operational parameters for the stability of Anaerobic Digestion system

ANALYSIS
- Moisture content and total solids content - Bulk density - Chemical oxygen demand - pH - Carbon to nitrogen ratio

4. DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION

The Biodigester is a high density polyethylene plastic tank of 1 m3 capacity. It can sustain upto 100 KPa. The biodigester is designed in such a way that 80% of its volume is filled with substrate and the rest is occupied by the biogas produced. The design of the mixing unit is derived from the principle of working of the Archimedes screw. At the end of the screw, a three-bladed propeller is fixed to enable mixing of the substrate found at the bottom of the digester.
Amount of biogas, litres 2500 2000 1500

5. RESULTS
8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 Monitoring days Graph 2: pH variation

500 0 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 Monitoring days Cumulative biogas production Cumulative methane production Graph 1: Cumulative production of methane and biogas

pH VS & TS (%)

1000

Figure 1: Constructed biodigester

Figure 2: Mixing support

90000 80000 70000 60000 50000 40000 30000 20000 10000 0 0 5 10 16 22 25 30 35 Days Graph 3: Chemical Oxygen Demand variation

90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 0 5 10 15 20 25 Monitoring days Graph 4: Volatile solids and total solids variation

COD, mg/L

vs% ts%

Table: Comparison between biogas and LPG.

Specifications
Figure 3: Propeller Figure 4: Archimedes screw

LPG 24 94 70 17

Biogas 29 86 57 30

Initial temperature (C) Final temperature (C) Temperature diff (C) Time taken (mins)

6. CONCLUSION
In this study 1m anaerobic reactor was designed. An attempt to optimize the process was done by constructing an Archimedess screw type mixer together with a threebladed propeller attached to the end.

The performance of the experimental digester was monitored for 34 days. The graph 1 indicates the cumulative biogas production. On day 6, the volume of biogas produced showed a decreasing trend due to the abrupt decrease in the pH. After the biogas production reaches its maximum percentage on day 14. The graph 2 depicts the ph variation. At the start of the process, the composition of the substrate was slightly acidic. To provide a stable medium for optimal activity of methanogenic bacteria, the digester was mixed well thoroughly thrice a day. The graph 3 depicts the variation of COD. At the beginning of the experiment the COD content of the organic substrate was 78,125 mg/L. On day 35 the COD was recorded to be 9986 mg/L. It can be observed on the graph 4 that volatile solids concentration decreases gradually as the retention time approaches. The total solids reduction and volatile solids destruction are 83.97% and 64.14 % respectively.

A total amount of 2179 Litres of biogas was produced containing 60.5% CH4 at a daily rate of approximately 0.158 L/kgVS.
A ratio of 1: 4: 1.5 for cow dung, inoculum and water was used respectively. The digester was operated at a low solids content of 10% and at room temperature condition

The biogas was eventually ignited with both a Bunsen burner and a cooking stove giving efficiencies of 88.26% and 46.26 % respectively.