Conversion of Agricultural Wastes to Biogas using as Inoculum Cattle Manure and Activated Sludge

Abstract

Agricultural wastes represent a large unexploited energy potential that could be converted into biogas by anaerobic digestion. In the present study there has been analysed the way in which agricultural wastes are converted into biogas by using as inoculum cattle manure as compared with activated sludge. To carry out this experiment on small scale there have been designed 5 batch bottles. For the batch process all substrate was put into the bottles at start. The biogas process was initiated after closing the bottles, and the biogas was collected during the process until the biogas production ended. During the 33 days of experiment the batch bottles were held at constant temperature (370C) in a water bath. The biomass used in the experiment was wheat straw and corn stalks. Before being used in the experiment the biomass was milled using a kitchen mixer. After that the biomass was subjected to a combination of thermal and chemical pretreatments. The volume of biogas produces was measured every seven days during the experiment period. The biogas production measurements were done by using a BlueSens measuring equipment.

Keywords

• agricultural wastes
• biogas
• corn stalks
• ph
• temperature
• wheat straw