Impacts of Mixing on Anaerobic Composting and Enhancing Biogas Recovery

Abstract

The effectiveness of cow dung for biogas production was investigated, using a laboratory scale 10L bioreactor working in batch and semi-continuous mode at 53^oC. Anaerobic digestion seemed feasible with an organic loading of up to 1.7 kg volatile solids (VS)/L d and an HRT of 10 days during the semi-continuous operation. The averaged cumulative biogas yield and methane content observed was 0.15 L/kg VS _added and 47%, respectively. The TS, VS and COD removals amounted to 49%, 47% and 48.5%, respectively. The results of the VS/TS ratio showed very small variation, which denote adequate mixing performance. However, there was some evidence of ammonia inhibition probably due to the uncontrolled pH employed. The data obtained establish that cow dung is an effective feedstock for biogas production achieving high cumulative biogas yield with stable performance. The future work will be carried out to study the effect of varying organic loading rate on anaerobic digestion of cow dung in a semi-continuous mode.