Bioresource Technology 99 (2008) 85378539

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Bioresource Technology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biortech

Short Communication

A biogas meter with adjustable resolution and minimal back-pressure

Simon A. Smith *, Claudio O. Stckle
Department of Biological Systems Engineering, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-6120, USA

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 9 July 2007
Accepted 18 February 2008
Available online 18 April 2008

Keywords:
Biogas meter
Gas measurement

a b s t r a c t
A new biogas meter was developed to satisfy the need for an adjustable resolution meter that has minimal back-pressure and wide ow rate capability. The new meter had three main components; a timed
bellows pump that delivered xed volumes, a pressure sensor, and a data logger. The meter was built
from off-the-shelf components and was thus easy to build and cost effective. The meter also proved to
be accurate, precise, sensitive, and simple to calibrate.
2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Biogas meters on anaerobic digesters can give a good indication
of chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal because almost all of
the converted COD leaves the digester as methane. However, these
meters are only useful for mass-balance purposes if their accuracy
exceeds the wet COD analytical techniques. There are several technical difculties in measuring laboratory digester biogas ows
(Merkens, 1962). The consensus in the literature is that the ideal
meter must be accurate, affordable, data-logging, corrosion resistant, require little maintenance, capable of measuring a wide ow
range, produce insignicant pressure variations, and be able to
operate at low gauge pressures. A large number of meters have
been reported (Angelidaki et al., 1992; Beaubien et al., 1988; Dissing et al., 1984; Erdman and Delwiche, 1985; Glauser et al.,
1984; Guwy et al., 1995; Gwatkin et al., 1986; Liu et al., 2004;
Mata-Alvarez et al., 1986; Merkens, 1962; Moletta and Albagnac,
1982; Mota, 1987; Nilsson et al., 1988; Van Den Berg et al.,
1974; Veiga et al., 1990)an indication that no one meter completely satises all the requirements of the different researchers.
This appears to be the case with the maximum biogas ow rate
and resolution, as these parameters are not normally adjustable
once the gas meter is built.
This note describes a meter in which a timed bellows pump
serves as the metering device, a oating cap serves as a sensor,
and a rain-gauge data logger serves as the recorder. These three
components can be combined as an alternative biogas meter, or
could be applied separately to extend the capabilities of existing
meters. This design meets the consensus denition of the ideal me* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 509 335 1578; fax: +1 509 335 2722.
E-mail address: simon_smith@wsu.edu (S.A. Smith).
0960-8524/$ - see front matter 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2008.02.049

ter but also offers greater exibility because the ow measurement

range and the resolution of individual gas units are both controlled
by an easily adjustable timer.
2. New meter design
The meter (Fig. 1) works as follows: Gas lifts the counterweighted oating cap until a sensor is triggered. The sensor activates a circuit (Fig. 2) which starts a delay-off timer, which in turn
starts a gas pump. The gas pump runs for a xed interval which is
set on the adjustable timer, and pumps gas past a gas seal. This gas
seal is needed to prevent gas leaks between pump runs. Every time
the pump activates, a single unit of gas is removed from the reactor, and the data log is time-stamped. As the data logger shows exactly when the pump ran, it is straightforward to convert the unit
volume and time data into a ow rate.
A control circuit schematic (Fig. 2) shows how the optical sensor
(Omicron EE-1001) is powered via the interval timer (Macromatic
Interval-On TR-60522 Relay). When the sensor activates it triggers
a solid-state relay (Idec, 10 A 48660 V AC) which starts the interval timer. The timer runs the gas pump for a xed time and at the
end of this interval, switches off the gas pump and resets. The dataside of the timer is un-powered, with the normally closed circuit
monitored by an event (rain-gauge) data logger (Onset HOBO
H7 Event Data Logger), and the normally open circuit connected
to a counter display (a modied pedometer). A push-button allows
manual time-stamping of the logger record.
3. Performance
Precision and linearity were evaluated by testing seven gas
pumping intervals (0.06, 0.10, 0.20, 0.23, 0.40, 0.45 and 0.90 s) 15

8538

S.A. Smith, C.O. Stckle / Bioresource Technology 99 (2008) 85378539

SENSOR ARM

FULCRUM
SENSOR

WATER FILLED
GAS TRAP WITH
FLOATING CAP

COUNTER
WEIGHT

CONNECTION
TO DIGESTER
GAS
SEAL

GAS PUMP

Fig. 1. Meter schematic: gas lifts the counter-weighted, oating cap which triggers
the sensor which activates a timer (not shown). The timer runs the gas pump for a
short xed interval before resetting itself.

PUSH BUTTON
(NC)

SENSOR
SWITCH
(NO)

NC

NC

NO

NO

EVENT
DATA LOGGER

POWER
RELAY
(NO)

GAS
PUMP

COUNT
DISPLAY

INTERVAL
TIMER

Fig. 2. Circuit schematic: closing the sensor switch powers a relay which starts the
gas pump and maintains power for the selected interval. Activation of the timer is
recorded by a data logger and the record can also be marked using a push-button
switch. NO is normally open and NC is normally closed.

Gas Volume (ml)

20

R2 = 0.9997

15
10
5
0

0.0

0.2

0.4
0.6
Pump Time (Seconds)

0.8

Fig. 3. Calibration data showing 15 measurements at each time point on the 0.055,
0.10, 0.20, 0.23, 0.40, 0.45 and 0.90 s pump settings. The tted line has a slope of
24.98 ml/s and an intercept of 0.11 ml. Each  represents one measurement.

times in random order (Fig. 3). These tests were performed at room
temperature (21.1 1 C) under stable atmospheric pressure
(92.792.8 kPa) using a stable voltage source (112.0112.1 V AC).
For each measurement the meter was vented, the pump time
was set, and air was added by gas-syringe until the meter activated. Air was added a second time using a graduated syringe until
the meter activated and this volume was recorded.
The tted line (Fig. 3) had a slope of 24.98 ml/s, an intercept of
0.11 ml, and an R2 of 0.9997. However, while the standard error

was small (0.117 ml) and the plotted data show that the meter
was precise and linear, this t cannot be extrapolated arbitrarily.
For instance the average of 15 volume measurements at the lowest
time setting (0.055 s) was 1.44 ml instead of the 1.48 ml predicted
by the linear t equation. This difference was probably due to
pump inertia during start up.
Sensor activation pressure was measured using a water-lled,
inclined well-manometer and the pressure required to raise the
sensor cap was found to be less than one Pascal, i.e. less than the
manometer resolution of 0.1 mm water gauge. This sensitivity
was due to the combination of a large sensor cap area, a long support arm, a counter-weight, and a non-contact (optical) switch.
The inuence of temperature on the gas meter was tested by
taking a total of 84 measurements at the 0.45 s pump time at three
different temperatures; 17, 22 and 36 C. Due to the practical difculties of changing the test temperatures these measurements
could not be completely randomised but were tested in groups of
14 measurements in the order 17, 22, 36, 17, 36 and 22 C. Temperature and volume correlation was low at 0.242 but even if the
correlation had been stronger it would not be important because
temperature changes must be avoided when measuring biogas,
as they introduce substantial volume errors as well as water
vapour condensation problems. More importantly, however, the
average gas volume pumped in 0.45 s at room temperature was
11.91 ml and as was different from the 11.35 ml measured during
the precision tests, an ANOVA test was performed to nd the cause
of this difference.
A two-way ANOVA on the inuence of gas pump supply voltage
and temperature on the metered volume showed that both supply
voltage and temperature were highly signicant (P = 1.22  10 37
and 2.23  10 3, respectively). The least squares tted line showed
a positive correlation for the gas pump supply voltage with each
volt change producing a 1.59% volume difference at 120 V AC,
which was probably due to greater bellows movement at higher
power. Two strategies are available to remove the effects of the
voltage uctuations; one is to provide a stable voltage and the second is to monitor the voltage and correct accordingly. The same
least squares tted line showed a negative correlation of gas pump
volume with pump temperature with each degree Celsius change
producing a 0.12% change in metered volume, and this was
thought to be due to stiffening of the pump bellows at lower temperatures allowing more effective pumping. However, temperature
corrections should not be necessary as the meter temperature
changes would be avoided in practice for the reasons listed
previously.
The biogas meter was capable of monitoring a broad range of
ows. The prototype used a modied aquarium air pump that
had two bellows, only one of which was used in these tests. The
smallest (single bellows) volume tested was 1.44 ml for a timer
setting of 0.055 s. Connecting the second bellows would double
the pumping ow rate and allow metering of more than 3000 L/
day. If still more ow capacity was needed, additional pumps could
be connected in parallel to the rst pump, and this capability
means that the maximum ow is effectively unlimited. Thus the
gas volume resolution and maximum ow appears to be constrained more by the data logger memory and download frequency
than by the gas pump characteristics.
Sources of non-meter error such as atmospheric pressure and
temperature variations, and vapour pressure contributions have
been addressed by other researchers (Veiga et al., 1990) and unless
corrected these errors nullify any gains in meter accuracy. In this
study the air pressure due to altitude was 92.3 kPa so a failure to
correct for altitude would overestimate the biogas volume by more
than 8%. Furthermore, the daily atmospheric pressures ranged
from 1.8% up to +2.4% in the laboratory, and, as these are average
pressures the hourly peak pressures would be more extreme than

S.A. Smith, C.O. Stckle / Bioresource Technology 99 (2008) 85378539

this. Apart from the gas volume changes caused by temperature

there is also an important water vapour contribution; for example,
at a digester temperature of 32 C about 5% of the biogas is water
vapour. Some of these errors can be corrected by monitoring the
atmospheric conditions and adjusting accordingly, while other
sources of variation can be eliminated by maintaining a constant
biogas meter temperature.
There are several ways to further improve this meter design, for
instance a newer data logger model would store more data, a Halleffect sensor would be insensitive to dirt, acidic salt solution might
be used as a sensor uid to eliminate carbon dioxide solubility concerns, and a latching relay would enable timer settings shorter
than the data logger sampling period. Another interesting possibility is that as the biogas is pumped from the digester space, this gas
might be passed through a carbon dioxide absorbent and then into
a second gas meter. This combination would allow an affordable
on-line measurement of carbon dioxide and methane.
4. Conclusions
This biogas meter design allowed precise gas ow measurements and recorded each ow volume unit as a time-stamped
event. The prototype meter was capable of distinguishing individual biogas pulses of less than 2 ml which is equivalent to 3.3 mg
COD (@ 65% methane and 32 C), and measuring up to 3000 L of
biogas a day. Choice of the gas unit volume was dictated by the
data logger memory size and the expected download frequency,
but the unit volume was easy to change because of the adjustable
pump interval timer. The meter sensor activation pressure was
negligible at less than one Pascal gauge pressure.
As with all gas meters, accurate measurements depend on making the appropriate corrections for the ambient pressure, temperature, and water vapour contribution. The precision of this meter
also allowed identication of the supply voltage as an important
metering variable.

8539

Acknowledgements
The authors thank Kelly Brayton for support and guidance on
this project, Worldthree for nancial support, and Leigh Smith
for helpful technical discussion.
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