Utilization of Food and Agricultural Residues for a Flexible Biogas Production: Process Stability and Effects on Needed Biogas Storage Capacities

Abstract

Biogas plants can contribute to future energy systems’ stability through flexible power generation. To provide power flexibly, a demand-oriented biogas supply is necessary, which may be ensured by applying flexible feeding strategies. In this study, the impacts of applying three different feeding strategies (1x, 3x and 9x feeding per day) on the biogas and methane production and process stability parameters were determined for a biogas plant with a focus on waste treatment. Two feedstocks that differed in (1) high fat and (2) higher carbohydrate content were investigated during semi-continuous fermentation tests. Measurements of the short chain fatty acids concentration, pH value, TVA/TIC ratio and total ammonium and ammonia content along with a molecular biology analysis were conducted to assess the effects on process stability. The results show that flexible biogas production can be obtained without negative impacts on the process performance and that production peaks in biogas and methane can be significantly shifted to another time by changing feeding intervals. Implementing the fermentation tests’ results into a biogas plant simulation model and an assessment of power generation scenarios focusing on peak-time power generation revealed a considerable reduction potential for the needed biogas storage capacity of up to 73.7%.

Potential Utilisation of Dark-Fermented Palm Oil Mill Effluent in Continuous Production of Biomethane by Self-Granulated Mixed Culture

“…The balance between methanogens and acidogens is the key for a successful BioH 2 and BioCH 4 production, together with the sufficient soluble component available in the substrate for the anaerobic digestion. Notably, several molecular techniques such as terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) 54 , ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis (RISA) 55 , quantitative real-time PCR (q-PCR) 56 , fluorescent in-situ hybridization (FISH) 57 , denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) 18,32 and next generation sequencing (NGS) 58 have been extensively studied to identify the archaeal community population in biogas production systems. Although, NGS method has been recommended recently for the comprehensive analysis of bacterial community composition in heterogeneous environments.…”

Biofuel Application as a Factor of Sustainable Development Ensuring: The Case of Russia

“…[10] have covered a lot of ground in development and improvement of the used technologies. The first-generation technologies created in the beginning provided industrial manufacturing of the three main types of BF: Bioethanol, biodiesel, and biogas [30][31][32]. At this stage, starch-containing agriculture products were mainly used as raw materials.…”

“…Scheme of the main steps made during the technological evolution in biofuel (BF) production. G1-first generation technologies [30][31][32][48][49][50][51][52]; G2-second generation technologies [34,39,49,52]; G3-third generation technologies [36,[40][41][42][53][54][55]; G4-fourth generation technologies [45,47].…”

High-resolution monitoring of VFA dynamics reveals process failure and exponential decrease of biogas production

“…to flexible biogas production have been tested concerning the frequency of feeding events, the organic loading rate, and different feedstock mixtures [4,[10][11][12]. It was also shown that significantly higher biogas and methane yields can be achieved with intermittent supply versus continuous (hourly) supply [12][13][14]. Nevertheless, ample amounts of feedstock, especially fast degradable carbohydrates, can be a stress factor for anaerobic digestion (AD) causing process failure in the worst case [3,5].…”