Impact of Organic Load on Methane Yields and Kinetics during Anaerobic Digestion of Sugarcane Bagasse: Optimal Feed-to-Inoculum Ratio and Total Solids of Reactor Working Volume

Amal Babu Puthumana and Prasad Kaparaju ()
Additional contact information
Amal Babu Puthumana: School of Engineering and Built Environment, Nathan Campus, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD 4111, Australia
Prasad Kaparaju: School of Engineering and Built Environment, Nathan Campus, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD 4111, Australia

Energies, 2024, vol. 17, issue 20, 1-18

Abstract: The effect of increasing organic load on the specific methane yields (SMYs) and kinetics of methane production during the anaerobic digestion (AD) of sugarcane bagasse (SB) was investigated in batch experiments at 37 °C. The organic load of the batch AD system was increased based on an increase in the feed-to-inoculum (F/I) ratio (T1–T5) and increase in the Total Solids (TS)% of the working volume (T6–T10). The results show that in both the treatment sets, an increase in organic load led to a decrease in SMY. Higher organic loads in terms of F/I ratio (T4 and T5) were inhibited due to Volatile Fatty Acid (VFA) accumulation. On the other hand, higher organic loads (T8, T9 and T10) in terms of the higher TS% of the working volume was inhibited by the accumulation of NH 4 -N. Thus, an organic load of 50 gVS/L at an F/I ratio = 1.0 and TS = 10% (T3) was found to be the highest organic load that had no significant inhibitions among the tested treatments. The results from the kinetic studies show that the first-order kinetic model is the best fit for the SMY data, with average differences% of 2.32% and 3.13% for treatments T1–T5 and T6–T10, respectively.

Keywords: F/I ratio; critical organic load; VFA accumulation; free water availability; kinetic modelling; specific methane yields (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: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/20/5083/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/20/5083/ (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:17:y:2024:i:20:p:5083-:d:1497502

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 ().