Low cost tubular digesters as appropriate technology for widespread application: Results and lessons learned from Bolivia

Martí-Herrero, Jaime; Chipana, Maria; Cuevas, Carlos; Paco, Gabriel; Serrano, Victor; Zymla, Bernhard; Heising, Klas; Sologuren, Jaime; Gamarra, Alba

doi:10.1016/j.renene.2014.05.036

Cited by 50 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 27 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Several countries in Asia and Africa, including China, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania, are launching massive campaigns to promote biogas technology [62]. Figure 2 shows three major types of domestic bio digesters commonly used in the developing countries [44,45,52,57,63,[69][70][71][72][73][74], i.e., the plug flow digester, sausage-bag or tubular/plastic digester, the fixed-dome digester or Chinese digester and the floating drum digester, also called telescopic digester or Hindu digester. Even if the gas collection method and design are different, the digestion process is the same.…”

Section: Anaerobic Digester Structure and Layoutmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Biogas Micro-Production from Human Organic Waste—A Research Proposal

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Organic waste (OW) management tackles the problem of sanitation and hygiene in developing countries and humanitarian camps where unmanaged waste often causes severe health problems and premature death. OW still has a usable energy content, allowing biogas production, potentially contributing to satisfy the local needs, e.g., cooking, lighting and heating. Digesters are the devices converting OW into biogas under anaerobic conditions. They are simple and effective solutions for the OW management in rural areas, humanitarian camps and remote developing regions, producing energy and fertilizers for local farming as residual. This paper describes the design and lab-test of a domestic OW management system integrating a waterless toilet with a small-scale digester producing safe biogas for local micro-consumption. Starting from people's needs and an extensive review of the current state-of-art technology, the proposed system's key innovation and strength is the combination of effectiveness and a very simple construction, set up and use, fitting with the rural conditions and raw materials available within the emerging countries. A small-scale prototype is assembled and lab-tested assessing the quantity-i.e., productivity-and quality-i.e., composition and methane content-of the produced biogas. The measured productivity in terms of specific biogas production (SBP) is of about 0.15 m 3 /kg SV and a methane content of about 74% in mass match the energy needs of domestic users, encouraging the spread of such systems in developing regions and rural areas.

show abstract

Section: Anaerobic Digester Structure and Layoutmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Values for the total solid (TS), volatile solid (VS), pH and the chemical oxygen demand (COD) are shown in Table 2. Finally, the organic load rate (OLR), adapted to normal conditions according to Martì-Herrero et al (2014) [72], is 0.417 kg SV /m 3 /day.…”

Section: Characterisation Of Bio Digester and Owhbmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biogas Micro-Production from Human Organic Waste—A Research Proposal

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A variety of feedstocks can be used in tubular digesters, generally in the TS range of 10% to 15% [26,40,41,48,58]. The recommended manure to water ratio of tubular digesters is 1:3 and the gas holder volume is 20% of the total volume compared to 25% for the fixed dome model [60]. They have been successfully implemented in Southeast Asia as well as Central and Southern America [26,46,60].…”

Section: Low Cost Tubular Digestersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The recommended manure to water ratio of tubular digesters is 1:3 and the gas holder volume is 20% of the total volume compared to 25% for the fixed dome model [60]. They have been successfully implemented in Southeast Asia as well as Central and Southern America [26,46,60]. In colder regions, the digester is kept inside a greenhouse made of adobe walls and a plastic sheet cover [60].…”

Section: Low Cost Tubular Digestersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Broadening the potential of biogas in Sub-Saharan Africa: An assessment of feasible technologies and feedstocks

Rupf

Bahri

Boer

et al. 2016

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper aims to provide a broad review and assessment of the feedstocks and applicable biogas technologies that are feasible in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Biodigesters and feedstocks available in SSA were identified according to scale and application -household, community, institutional, and commercial. Aside from livestock manure, suitable feedstocks for household, community, and institutional biodigesters include crop residues, night soil/domestic sewage, and the organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW). Significant untapped feedstocks exist from SSA agro-processing and food production industries. Biodigesters available in SSA for household, community, and institutional installations include variations of fixed dome, plug flow, and floating cover digesters.Commercial digester designs applicable to the region include continuously stirred tank reactors and fixed film digesters. The key factors that need to be considered in selecting suitable biodigester designs for specific applications include: feedstock availability, water supply, energy demand, local materials and labour, and the level of commitment to operate and maintain the biodigester effectively.

show abstract

“…Approximately 40%-50% of the volatile solids (VS) in dairy manure is biodegradable lignocellulosic biomass which can be converted to CH4 [4]. The total solids content of fresh manure of cow (12%-16%) makes it unsuitable for conventional wet anaerobic digestion (WAD) because of the large amount of water (manure:water mass ratio between 1:1 and 1:4) required to dilute and decrease the solids content to less than 9% to allow liquid handling and processing [5][6][7]. Avoiding dilution of cow manure fed to anaerobic digestion (AD) is an important engineering design objective.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Organic Loading Rate on Psychrophilic Anaerobic Digestion of Solid Dairy Manure

Saady

Massé

2015

Energies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:Increasing the feed total solids to anaerobic digester improves the process economics and decreases the volume of liquid effluent from current wet anaerobic digestion. The objective of this study was to develop a novel psychrophilic (20 °C) anaerobic digestion technology of undiluted cow feces (total solids of 11%-16%). Two sets of duplicate laboratory-scale sequence batch bioreactors have been operated at organic loading rates (OLR) of 6.0 to 8.0 g total chemical oxygen demand (TCOD) kg) during 210 days. The results demonstrated that the process is feasible at treatment cycle length (TCL) of 21 days; however, the quality of cow feces rather than the OLR had a direct influence on the specific methane yield (SMY). The SMY ranged between 124.5 ± 1.4 and 227.9 ± 4.8 normalized liter (NL) CH4 kg . Substrate-to-inoculum mass ratio (SIR) was 0.63 ± 0.05, 0.90 ± 0.09, and 1.06 ± 0.07 at OLR of 6.0, 7.0, and 8.0 g TCOD kg, respectively. No volatile fatty acids (VFAs) accumulation has been observed which indicated that hydrolysis was the rate limiting step and VFAs have been consumed immediately. Bioreactors performance consistency in terms of the level of SMYs, VFAs concentrations at end of the TCL, pH stability and volatile solids reduction indicates a stable and reproducible process during the entire operation.

show abstract

Low cost tubular digesters as appropriate technology for widespread application: Results and lessons learned from Bolivia

Cited by 50 publications

References 27 publications

Biogas Micro-Production from Human Organic Waste—A Research Proposal

Biogas Micro-Production from Human Organic Waste—A Research Proposal

Broadening the potential of biogas in Sub-Saharan Africa: An assessment of feasible technologies and feedstocks

Impact of Organic Loading Rate on Psychrophilic Anaerobic Digestion of Solid Dairy Manure

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About