Investigating the challenges of biogas provision in water limited environments through laboratory scale biodigesters

Jennifer Wardle; Davide Dionisi; Joanne Smith

doi:10.1080/14786451.2023.2235022

Investigating the challenges of biogas provision in water limited environments through laboratory scale biodigesters

Jennifer Wardle, Davide Dionisi, Joanne Smith

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1 Citation (Scopus)

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Abstract

The potential for biogas provision through household-scale anaerobic digestion in rural sub-Saharan Africa is limited due to perceived water shortages. The most common substrate is animal dung diluted 1:1 with water. Two experimental methods tested the potential of reducing water demand. The first experiment compared the chemical oxygen demand (COD) and volatile solid removal of four cow dung dilutions ranging from 3.5-10.6% total solids. In the second experiment, bioslurry filtrate was recirculated back into the fresh substrate at different concentrations. The highest COD removal rate of 28.3% was obtained from mixing equal volumes of dung with filtrate (mean total solids 7.4%) while the highest methane production rate of 0.40 g/L/day, calculated from COD balance, was obtained from undiluted cow dung (total solids 10.6%). Results suggest the potential for a 75-100% reduction in water demand.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	829-844
Number of pages	15
Journal	International Journal of Sustainable Energy
Volume	42
Issue number	1
Early online date	21 Jul 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/14786451.2023.2235022
Publication status	Published - 21 Jul 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding
This project was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council under Grant [BBSRC BB/M010996/1] and the University of Aberdeen.

Data Availability Statement

Mendeley Data, doi: 10.17632/37f4dsgb4z.1 and doi:10.17632/mnwt9jyv6z.1.

Keywords

Biogas
Household-Scale Anaerobic digestion
water demand
sub-saharan Africa
organic resource use

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10.1080/14786451.2023.2235022Licence: CC BY

Wardle_etal_IJSE_Investigating_The_Challenges_VOR
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Final published version, 2.5 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "The potential for biogas provision through household-scale anaerobic digestion in rural sub-Saharan Africa is limited due to perceived water shortages. The most common substrate is animal dung diluted 1:1 with water. Two experimental methods tested the potential of reducing water demand. The first experiment compared the chemical oxygen demand (COD) and volatile solid removal of four cow dung dilutions ranging from 3.5-10.6% total solids. In the second experiment, bioslurry filtrate was recirculated back into the fresh substrate at different concentrations. The highest COD removal rate of 28.3% was obtained from mixing equal volumes of dung with filtrate (mean total solids 7.4%) while the highest methane production rate of 0.40 g/L/day, calculated from COD balance, was obtained from undiluted cow dung (total solids 10.6%). Results suggest the potential for a 75-100% reduction in water demand.",

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Investigating the challenges of biogas provision in water limited environments through laboratory scale biodigesters

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Data Availability Statement

Keywords

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