2012 AIChE Annual Meeting

(519d) Anaerobic Digestion of Waste Materials for the Production of Biogas

Authors

Dufreche, S., University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Bajpai, R., University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Zappi, M., University of Louisiana at Lafayette


Anaerobic
digestion of waste materials for the production of biogas

Ramalingam Subramaniam, Stephen Dufreche, RakeshBajpai, and Mark E. Zappi

Bioprocessing Research
Laboratory

Department
of Chemical Engineering

University of Louisiana at
Lafayette, Lafayette, LA

Biogas
energy can be produced from various sources of biomass which include
agriculture crops and residues, municipal solid wastes, and animal waste. In
this work, anaerobic biogas was produced from waste materials such as shrimp
waste, landfill leachate, and crab waste. The biogas
produced from these waste materials in an anaerobic digester contains 65-70%
methane and 25-30% carbon dioxide. Biogas with a methane composition of 66% has
a heating value of 668 Btu/ft3. Batch experiments were conducted in
500 ml three neck rectors as well as New Brunswick, microfirm
MF114 reactor. Kinetic model was developed from the batch experiments. Based on
the batch kinetic results, continuous process was investigated in 14 L bioreactor
with a working volume of 10L. Batch kinetics, fermentor design and scale up
will be discussed in this presentation.

See more of this Session: Reaction Kinetics and Transport Fundamentals for Biomass Conversion I

See more of this Group/Topical: Sustainable Engineering Forum