Production of biogas by anaerobic digestion process and process simulation

Abstract

The objective of the paper is to study the production of biogas from an existing biogas plant using food waste. As food waste only rice is used. Also process simulation of methane production and comparison of simulated result with experimental result are done to optimize the methane production. The simulation is done in PRO II process simulation software. A 6 pilot scale wet digestion plant was constructed for the purpose of biogas production. The duration of the study period was 120 days. In this system an average specific gas production of 31 kg-mol/hr was obtained for .05 kg-mol/hr of starch loading rate where process simulation gives the value of gas production as 49 kg-mol/hr for the same loading rate of starch. The percentage of methane in the biogas obtained from the plant is 69% & the percentage of carbon-di-oxide is 29%. So it is found feasible to use rice as food waste in biogas plant.