Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Potential: Simulation of Lab and Industrial-Scale Processes

Ihsan Hamawand and Craig Baillie
Additional contact information
Ihsan Hamawand: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture (NCEA), University of Southern Queensland (USQ), Toowoomba, 4350 QLD, Australia
Craig Baillie: National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture (NCEA), University of Southern Queensland (USQ), Toowoomba, 4350 QLD, Australia

Energies, 2015, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-21

Abstract: In this study, a simulation was carried out using BioWin 3.1 to test the capability of the software to predict the biogas potential for two different anaerobic systems. The two scenarios included: (1) a laboratory-scale batch reactor; and (2) an industrial-scale anaerobic continuous lagoon digester. The measured data related to the operating conditions, the reactor design parameters and the chemical properties of influent wastewater were entered into BioWin. A sensitivity analysis was carried out to identify the sensitivity of the most important default parameters in the software’s models. BioWin was then calibrated by matching the predicted data with measured data and used to simulate other parameters that were unmeasured or deemed uncertain. In addition, statistical analyses were carried out using evaluation indices, such as the coefficient of determination ( R -squared), the correlation coefficient ( r ) and its significance ( p -value), the general standard deviation ( SD ) and the Willmott index of agreement, to evaluate the agreement between the software prediction and the measured data. The results have shown that after calibration, BioWin can be used reliably to simulate both small-scale batch reactors and industrial-scale digesters with a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of less than 10% and very good values of the indexes. Furthermore, by changing the default parameters in BioWin, which is a way of calibrating the models in the software, as well, this may provide information about the performance of the digester. Furthermore, the results of this study showed there may be an over estimation for biogas generated from industrial-scale digesters. More sophisticated analytical devices may be required for reliable measurements of biogas quality and quantity.

Keywords: wastewater; anaerobic digestion (AD); biogas; BioWin; meat industry; simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/8/1/454/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/8/1/454/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:8:y:2015:i:1:p:454-474:d:44639

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().