Improvement of Biogas Production Utilizing a Complex Anaerobic Digestion Model and Gradient-Based Optimization

Tina Kegl, Breda Kegl () and Marko Kegl
Additional contact information
Tina Kegl: Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Maribor, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia
Breda Kegl: Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maribor, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia
Marko Kegl: Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maribor, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia

Energies, 2024, vol. 17, issue 6, 1-17

Abstract: Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a promising technology for renewable energy production from organic waste. In order to maximize the produced biogas quantity and quality, this paper deals with the optimization of the AD process in a CSTR bioreactor of a full-scale biogas plant. For this purpose, a novel approach was adopted coupling, a highly complex BioModel for AD simulation, and a gradient-based optimization method. In order to improve AD performance, the dosages of various types of biological additives, the dosages of inorganic additives, and the temperature in the bioreactor were optimized in three different scenarios. The best biogas quality was obtained using multi-objective optimization, where the objective function involves the following two conflicting objectives: the maximization of biogas production and minimization of the needed heating energy. The obtained results show that, potentially, the content of C H 4 can be increased by 11%, while the contents of H 2 , H 2 S , and N H 3 can be reduced by 30%, 20%, and 81% when comparing the simulation results with the experimental data. The obtained results confirm the usefulness of the proposed approach, which can easily be adapted or upgraded for other bioreactor types.

Keywords: additives; anaerobic digestion; approximation method; BioModel; complex substrate; gradient-based optimization; process conditions (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/1996-1073/17/6/1279/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/6/1279/ (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:6:p:1279-:d:1352829

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 ().