5 Steps to Making Homemade Biogas

The following table outlines the five steps to creating flammable biogas and I will get
into further detail with each one. Biogas is reproduced in a special airtight tank called an
anaerobic digester. The design of the anaerobic digester determines the first three steps.

Step 1. Airtight Environment. A Ziploc baggie can be used for an anaerobic digester.
The difficulty arises from trying to add fresh material without allowing oxygen into the
system. The most common method of creating a continuous flow digester is the “teapot”
or “P-trap” shape. Most biogas digesters are some variation of this teapot shape.
Step 2. Archaea love water. When loading a digester, the water content in the material
put in it should be taken into consideration. A head of lettuce, for example, looks very
solid to us, however, it is 98% water. Dried rice is only 14% water. Regardless of the size
of your digester, the “40-50-10 Rule” is simple rule of thumb to follow to get the correct
volume: Forty percent material, fill the rest of the digester with water except for 10%
headspace.

Step 3. A good analogy to think about regarding temperature and anaerobic digestion is
your temperature is like the gas pedal of your car. The more you step on it, the faster
your digester will convert waste into gas. However, also just like stepping on the gas
pedal, there are consequences for it. The warmer your digester is, the archaea that
decompose your waste get more fragile and susceptible to an unexpected crash.
Temperature can be controlled a few different ways. In China, digesters are typically
buried underground and built much larger than they need to be. This way they can be
overloaded in winter months to maintain consistent gas production. Other designs
employ a greenhouses or hoop house over them. More advanced systems integrate some
kind of heat exchanger, which can be heated with solar collectors. Regardless of your
design, avoid using biogas or any other fuel to heat your digester. Make sure energy you
use is excess energy on its way to being wasted.

Step 4. Neutral pH is an important parameter in anaerobic digestion, just as it is for

aerobic composting. If pH is measured at the inlet, it will be slightly lower than neutral
— usually around 5.5 — as fresh material is converted into acids. The pH will neutralize
as these acids are converted into methane gas. By the time the liquid biofertilizer comes
out the digester, it should be 7. If the pH of the biofertilizer is lower than this, it is an
indicator the digester has been over-fed and is at risk to “sour,” or stop working due to
low pH. If the pH at the inlet goes below 5.5, it is necessary to add some wood ashes or
lime to buffer the digester. A soured digester has no bubble activity and instead of
producing gas, instead it draws air into it. The top will be sucked in tightly against the
surface of the liquid and if a brewer’s airlock is being used, the water in the airlock will
be sucked into the digester. Restarting a soured digester is time consuming, and in most
cases it is simpler to dump it out and start over.

Step 5. Biogas production is best at the same 25:1 C:N ratio as aerobic composting. The
reason cattle manure is far and away the most common feedstock for biogas is cattle
manure is naturally the perfect 25:1 carbon-to-nitrogen ratio. Cattle manure makes an
excellent feedstock to begin experimenting with biogas with. Other wastes need to be
combined as a compost pile is.
After these five steps, it is important to know that for the first 48 hours for a small
digester or up to a couple of weeks for a larger system, the digester will only produce
carbon dioxide (CO2). Carbon dioxide is of course used in fire extinguishers. When you
put a match to the gas to test for flammability, it will be blown out with an audible “hiss”
and a wisp of black smoke. As the biogas begins to come on, the hiss and black smoke
will be gone and you will smell the distinct “rotten eggs” scent of the hydrogen sulfide
(H2S). This odor is the signal to begin capturing your gas, as it is either flammable or
soon will be. This “CO2 Phase” has caused many people to abandon DIY projects that
might have been flammable if they had waited a short time longer.

Resources
For additional information, a terrific introductory text to the subject of biogas is A
Chinese Biogas Manual, available on Amazon and other retailers. This guide is an
English version of the same booklet handed out to Chinese villagers to build their home
and village scale biogas digesters. Our company, Hestia Home Biogas, offers a biogas
science kit, which includes everything necessary to produce a small but useful amount of
flammable biogas for classroom demonstrations. Just as the home brewer brews beer or
wine to achieve just the right taste, the best way to learn how to make biogas is practice.
The rewards will outweigh the difficulties when you light the blue flame of biogas for the
first time. With this magic formula you can create clean burning renewable energy
wherever you are.