Biogas Digester PDF

 
“Biogas” is a naturally occuring mixture of 60 to 70% methane and 30 to 40% CO2 with some H2S (Hydrogen Sulfide), that burns similar to so-called “natural gas”, which is actually a fossil fuel.  Once generated and stored, biogas is primarily used around the world for cooking and heating at the home scale, but it also has many other important applications both domestically and industrially. Its use as a fuel to power electric generators at all scales is well established and it also has a long history of use in gas lamps and absorption refrigeration systems.   When purified and compressed we see it used as an effective fuel for cars, trucks and buses (Stockholm-Sweden is a leader in this application). Thus biogas is a flexible substitute for non-renewable energy sources at many levels.   Additionally, its production creates a high quality fertilizer and provides feedstock for the creation of petrochemical substitutes so biogas serves to replace fossil resources on many levels.
A “biogas digester” is a simple system which produces biogas, via the natural anaerobic decomposition of
organic material.   The  biogas  digester,  once  its  “starter  culture”  of  methanogenic  (CH4  producing)    bacteria  has  been established (usually several weeks after initial loading  with animal manures or lake mud) can be fed daily with kitchen and garden waste. The ecosystem of bacteria in the biogas digester extract energy from the organic material and generate methane gas.  The  digested  organic  material  exits  the  system  as  a  high-quality  fertilizer  in  liquid  form.  This  liquid anaerobic “compost”  still contains all the minerals and other soil nutrients of the kitchen and garden waste, including the nitrogen that can be lost through aerobic composting.

Download PDF  Biogas Digester PDF

Gases: Biogas & Electric Cuts Emissions from Anaerobic Digesters

Biogas & Electric, located in San Diego, California, has developed technology that reduces harmful emissions created during anaerobic digestion.

Anaerobic digestion may serve as a renewable energy source, and reduce methane when utilized at wastewater treatment plants, dairies, and landfills. Seth Burns was intrigued by benefits of turning waste to a resource, but realized one of the biggest challenges for the anaerobic digester industry was to reduce the harmful emissions generated by the process.

Stringent standards enforced by the California Air and Resources Board (CARB), and other regional air boards require the reduction of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emitted during the anerobic digestion process. NOx is known to cause an array of health problems including asthma.

In an effort to make the anaerobic digestion process more environmentally sound, Mike Matelich, process chemist and inventor of the process, and Burns partnered to develop a way to reduce NOx and SOx emissions.

The technology is an add-on solution to the biogas engine. The add-on puts the biogas engine exhaust in contact with the liquid waste stream from the anaerobic digester.

“Mike determined that certain chemicals are endogenous to the waste stream, such as ammonia, which can scrub the NOx out of the exhaust stream,” stated Burns.

The bench scale prototype chemical reaction that occurs reduces NOx and SOx, the precursors to smog and acid rain respectively, by greater than 95% each.

Burns and Matelich hope to replicate these results in the field at full scale. The following diagram outlines the process:

U.S. Patent No. 8,012,746, entitled “NOx Removal Systems for Biogas Engines at Anaerobic Digestion Facilities,” describes the Biogas and Electric technology (’746 Patent).

According to Burns, a provisional patent application was filed at the end of December 2009. The non-provisional, filed September 15, 2010, enjoyed accelerated examination via the now-defunct U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Green Technology Pilot Program (GTPP) (read about some fast track alternatives post-GTPP here). The ’746 Patent issued September 6, 2011, just under a year from the non-provisional filing date.

The company has received funding from USDA-NIFA SBIR Phase I and Phase II research grants and from Waste Management. A full-scale dairy-based demonstration project is being constructed in Imperial County, California. The technology will be utilized on a 300 kW biogas engine.

Previous technologies have only been able to reduce NOx to 9ppm, but Burns and Matelich are confident that their technology will be able to reduce NOx emissions enough to meet the stringent CARB standard of 2 ppm.

Burns and Matelich plan to build a demo project within the wastewater treatment industry, and begin installing their solution for revenue.
Source: www.greenpatentblog.com

Kitchen Waste Biogas Digester by Mr. Sandesh Mhadalekar

Kitchen Waste Biogas Digester by Mr. Sandesh Mhadalekar
Kitchen waste can be utilized for production of Biogas (daily waste of 4 member family – aprox 500gm). In existing designs of biogas (developed by different NGO/agencies) their are few problem and one of major problem is that most of them are bulky units. To check feasibility of making tiny domestic Kitchen waste biogas unit project is started at Vigyan ashram, Pabal. Mr. Sandesh Mhadalekar ( Agril Btech Student , Dapoli Agri Btech college) worked on this project in last 3 months and concluded following results as

Mr. Sandesh Mhadalekar ( Agril Btech Student , Dapoli Agri Btech college)

Read full story http://biogas-in-india.blogspot.com/2012/04/kitchen-waste-biogas-digester.html

Biomethane Feedstock Production

Since today’s infrastructure for transport is based on liquid fuels, the introduction of  gaseous fuels into the transport sector is slow and challenging for future transport  strategies. Nevertheless, there exists already a market for vehicles which use gaseous fuels in place of liquid fuels. Today, most of  them run on natural gas. Many automotive manufacturers already offer pure or bivalent natural gas vehicl es as standard models. One
of the promising future options for sustainable transport fuels is the subsidization of natural gas by biomethane

 Biomethane is the most efficient and clean burning biofuel which is available today. It can be produced from nearly all types of biomass including wet biomass which is not usable for most other biofuels.  Another motivation for using gaseous biofuels for transport applications is the opportunity of diversifying feedstock sources.  The raw material for the production of biomethane is biogas, which can be processed from various feedstock sources. For biogas production much more different feedstock sources can be used than for common liquid biofuels. For instance biodiesel can be only made from plant materials containing certain amounts of oil. In contra st, biogas is produced from nearly all types of organic materials including vegetable and animal feedstocks. The origin of the feedstock can vary, rangi ng from livestock waste, manure, harvest
surplus, to vegetable oil residues. Dedicated energy crops are becoming more and more practice as feedstock source for biogas pr oduction. Recently, wastewater sludge, municipal solid wastes and organic wastes from house holds have been introduced as feedstock. Another feedstock source is the collection of biogas from landfill sites. In Germany biogas is produced in agricultural facilities, main ly by the fermentation of manure and maize
One main advantage of methane production is the ability to use so-called “wet biomass” as feedstock source. Wet biomass can not be used for the production of ot her biofuels such as PPO, biodiesel or biomethane. Examples for wet biomass are sewage sludge, manure from dairy and swine farms as well as residues from  food processing. They all are characterized by moisture contents of more than 60–70 %. The use of  waste materials  is not only excellent suitability for biogas production it also creates some additional benefits. Thus, it cont ributes to reduce animal wastes and odors. Digestion effectively eliminates environmental hazards, such as overproduction of liquid manure. Therefore biogas production is an excellent way for livestock farmers to comply with increasing governmental regulations of animal wastes. In addition it destroys disease-causing pathogens existing in waste materials.  Nevertheless, using animal feedstock can be
critical as well. For instance anaerobic degradation of poultry excrements with high contents of organic nitrogen produce high  concentrations of undesirable ammonium. Furthermore, new economical and ecological solutions for the treatment of animal by products are required due  to the BSE-crisis (PRECHTL  & F AULSTICH  2004). However, it is often the combination of environmental, ec onomical and legal reasons that motivates farmers to use digester t echnology for waste treatment. Apart from waste materials wet  biomass also includes dedicated energy crops  or any other vegetable materials with high moisture contents. Even grass can be used as feedstock. The suitability of energy crops for biogas production was received through improvements in the fermentation process. The main disadvantage of energy crops when compared to waste materials is their need for additional agricultural land as it is needed also for PPO,
biodiesel and bioethanol production. Nevertheless, energy crops for biogas production have several advantages which make them very promising for the future. One main advantage is the production of considerably high yields of energy crops, even when they are cultivated extensively. Chemical fertilizers and pesticides are not required or only in small amounts. Damaged and uneatable harvests resulting from unfavorable growing and weather conditions, as well as from pest contaminations are suitable for biogas production, too. In addition, cultivations do not have to become fully ripe, since the whole plant can be
used for biogas production. Harvests do not have to be dried.  The quality and yield of bi ogas heavily depends on the feedstock type. According to (BENSMANN  2005) the average yield of biogas is 4 100  liters per hectare. This is equivalent to approximately 127 GJ/ha, being nearly three times as high as for RME and one and half times higher than for ethanol. Much higher  yields can be expected from energy crop
optimization (ARNOLD et al. 2005).

Video | Fixed dome type biogas plant

Fixed dome type biogas plant

Fixed dome type biogas plant

fixed dome type biogas plant the arrangement of producing biogas from animal dung, human excreta, industrial and domestic wastes is known as biogas plant
Construction:
it consists of a well shaped like underground tank made of bricks and cement its called digester tanks and it has inlet and outlet valves. The roof of the tank is dome shaped.A gas outlet pipe of the dome is fitted at the top. there is a mixing tank above the ground level which is connected to the inlet calves of the digester through a slopping inlet chamber below the ground level. on the other side there is a outlet chamber. This outlet chamber connected to the overflow tank which colact used slurry

Biogas News | Apple to Build 5 MW Biogas Fuel Cell at Maiden Data Center

Apple to Build 5 MW Biogas Fuel Cell at Maiden Data Center

 

Apple has filed its plans to build the 5 MW fuel cell project in Maiden, North Carolina, that will utilise biogas to offset its natural gas use and qualify as a renewable facility.

According to Apple's 2012 Facilities Report, the commissioning of its new data center in Maiden is part of its commitment to reduce the environmental impact of its facilities through energy efficient, green building design.

The company said that the facility is exceptionally energy efficient and has earned the coveted LEED Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The recently completed Maiden facility is where the computing giant supports services such as its iCloud online data storage system and its SIRI voice-recognition software.

Data center's are notoriously hungry for energy. To meet the energy needs of the Maiden facility with high-percentage renewable energy mix, Apple said that it has embarked on a renewable energy program.

As part of this program, the company is building a fuel cell installation that it said, when online later in 2012, will be the largest non-utility fuel cell installation operating anywhere in the country.
Apple to Build 5 MW Biogas Fuel Cell at Maiden Data Center
The 5 MW facility, located directly adjacent to the data center, will be powered by 100% biogas, and provide more than 40 million kWh of 24x7 baseload renewable energy annually.

Additionally, Apple is building the nation's largest end user-owned, onsite solar array on the land surrounding the data center. When completed, this 100 acre, 20 MW facility will supply 42 million kWh of clean, renewable energy annually.

Energy efficient design features:

• A chilled water storage system to improve chiller efficiency by transferring 10,400 kWh of electricity consumption from peak to off-peak hours each day
• Use of "free" outside air cooling through a waterside economiser operation during night and cool-weather hours, which, along with water storage, allows the chillers to be turned off more than 75% of the time
• Extreme precision in managing cooling distribution for cold-air containment pods, with variable-speed fans controlled to exactly match air flow to server requirements from moment to moment
• Power distributed at higher voltages, which increases efficiency by reducing power loss.
• White cool-roof design to provide maximum solar reflectivity
• High-efficiency LED lighting combined with motion sensors
• Real-time power monitoring and analytics during operations
• Construction processes that utilised 14% recycled materials, diverted 93% of construction waste from landfills, and sourced 41% of purchased materials within 500 miles of the site.

According to a report by the News & Observer of Raleigh, the facility will likely utilise biogas from landfill or some another source to offset its natural gas use and qualify as a renewable facility.

While Apple has not officially commented on the choice technology partner for the project, Tech news website, GigaOM reported that it is "pretty sure" the company will go with Sunnyvale, California based fuel cell manufacturer, Bloomenergy, which recently launched its 'Mission Critical Systems Practice'.

Data centers require very high availability. In a statement related to the launch of the Mission Critical Systems Practice, vice president, Peter Gross explained:

"Bloom Energy will now fill a critical need in the data center industry. By providing a reliable, clean and stable energy source that is immune to disruptions to the grid, Bloom will help its customers reduce their security risks considerably, while at the same time improving efficiency and cutting greenhouse gas emissions."

According to Bloomenergy, its fuel cell modules are currently used by Walmart, Google, Staples, eBay, Cox Enterprises, FedEx, Bank of America, Coca-Cola, AT&T and Adobe, according to Bloom's web site.

Solid oxide fuel cells

According to Bloomenergy, legacy fuel cell technologies like proton exchange membranes (PEMs), phosphoric acid fuel cells (PAFCs), and molten carbonate fuel cells (MCFCs), have all required expensive precious metals, corrosive acids, or hard to contain molten materials.

While Some modifying such systems to supply combined heat and power (CHP) does improve the economic value proposition, it only really does so in environments with exactly the right ratios of heat and power requirements on a 24/7/365 basis. Everywhere else, the company claimed that the cost, complexity, and customisation of CHP tends to outweigh the benefits.

The company said that for some time Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) hold the greatest potential of any fuel cell technology. With low cost ceramic materials, and extremely high electrical efficiencies, SOFCs can deliver attractive economics without relying on CHP.

However, while operating at temperatures typically over 800 degrees C the technology offers extremely high electrical efficiency, and fuel flexibility, these characteristics have also thrown up challenges that have led to the technology being difficult to commercialise.

According to the company breakthroughs in materials science, combined with it innovative new design, have enabled it to offer a cost effective, all-electric solution SOFC system.

The company offers the 100 kW ES-5400 and the 200 kW ES-5700.

Both systems operate using the same technology, where the electrolyte is a solid ceramic material. The anode and cathode are made from special inks that coat the electrolyte. No precious metals, corrosive acids, or molten materials are required.

Next, the company said that an electrochemical reaction converts fuel and air into electricity without combustion.

At high temperature, warmed air enters the cathode side of the fuel cell and steam mixes with fuel to produce reformed fuel, which then enters the anode side.

Then the chemical reaction begins in the fuel cell. As the reformed fuel crosses the anode, it attracts oxygen ions from the cathode. The oxygen ions combine with the reformed fuel to produce electricity, water, and small amounts of carbon dioxide.

The company said that the water gets recycled to produce the steam needed to reform the fuel. The process also generates the heat required by the fuel cell.

 

Source:http://www.waste-management-world.com

 

Bio-Gas as alternative source of energy for Environmental protection and improving livelihood at household level (ERI/SGP/OP4/Y3/CORE/2010/08)

Country:	ERITREA
Grantee:	National Union of Eritrean Youth and Students-Head Quarter - NUEW-HQ (Non-government Organization)
Focal Area:	Climate Change, Biodiversity, Land Degradation
Op. Program:	OP1 - Arid and Semi-Arid Ecosystems OP6 - Promoting the Adoption of Renewable Energy by Removing Barriers and Reducing Implementation Costs OP15 - Operational Program on Sustainable Land Management
Project Type:	Full
Operational Phase:	OP4 - Y3 (Jul 09 - Jun 10)
Dates:	3/2010 - 3/2011
Grant Amount:	31 127,75 USD
Project Status:	Currently under execution
Project Types:	Demonstration

Project Details & Results

The location of the project is in Aditekelezan sub-town, which is 45 km west of Asmara. A research on the use and installation of biogas as alternative source of energy is already conducted by the Ministry of Agriculture Central region supported by Chinese experts and it is time to use and replicate the scientific study at household level.

Fifteen households preferably female headed households having some animals and adequate water will be identified and selected as direct beneficiaries of the project. Identification and selection will be done in collaboration with the Local Administration of the area.

As per the various regional studies, wood fuel is the primary source of energy covering 90% of the total energy demand in the rural areas of the developing countries. And in Eritrea, 77% of energy is met through biomass most of it is used for cooking, which is often done over an open fire. Introduction of biogas is one way of substituting the biomass energy which is more cost effective and environmentally acceptable.

Awareness raising on alternative use of energy as biogas and environmental protection to the community and especially the young people will be conducted to illicit behavioral change in the use of firewood and protecting trees. Youth action groups will be established for awareness raising and tree planting purpose to secure the environment and further disseminate the use of biogas as alternative source of energy by their communities.

The overall objective of the bio-gas project is to contribute to the behavioral change on environment protection and livelihood development among Aditekelezan community by introducing Bio-Gas as alternative source of energy.

Immediate Objectives:- Introduction of biogas as alternative source of energy in selected 15 households preferably female headed households; develop the capacity of the community through on the job training on the use of biogas technology; establish youth action groups to protect the environment through tree planting and environmental protection; enhance the awareness of the community on environmental protection and livelihood development.

The project activities will mainly focus on constructing the 15 bio-gas facilities, building the capacity of selected community members on how to use, install and maintain biogas, raise the awaress of the community in general and the young community in particular to protect their environment through various means and promote the use of biogas as an alternative source of energy.

Stakeholders and beneficiaries of the project.
The National Union of Eritrean Youth & Students/HQ is the grantee of the project and will closely work with the backstopping of the Ministry of Agriculture that has experts who previously dealt with the study (research) of the bio-gas in Asmara. Other very important stakeholders of the project are SGP, UNDP, Ministry of Energy and Mines and the Local Administration.

Project Photo Gallery

Site selection & delineation	Biogas digester pit preparation	Biogas digester under construction	Biogas digester under construction 2
Biogas digester filled with animal waste	Project beneficiary while fitting the gas pipe	Biogas demonstration meeting	Biogas demonstration meeting 2