Comparision Of Formulas To Calculate Biogas Production

Abstract

Environmental pollution is one of the major problems plaguing the modern world today. The environment and the various elements in the environment need energy to meet their need. So there is a need to extract energy from solid waste. The studies on conversion of solid waste to energy have resulted several alternatives including the biogas generation. There are several alternatives in estimation of biogas yield from the bio degradable fraction of solid waste. The study uses the formulae proposed by researchers to compute the yield of biogas from the variants of organic wastes. These will facilitate the outcomes and bring out the proximate or parities. In the present study the comparison of the formulae suggested by different researchers was made. Different types of solid wastes such as kitchen waste, fruit waste and sludge are considered for the study. The solid waste characteristics of each waste were taken from the literature.  The COD of the waste is estimated. The results obtained were used to arrive the selection of equation for the estimation of biogas yield for a given waste. The equations suggested by Youssef A et.al (2010), Bouille and Dubois (2004) are giving similar biogas yield values with ± 20% variations for the solid wastes considered except fruit waste. Based on the study it can be concluded that either Youssef A et.al (2010) (or) Bouille and Dubois (2004) equation may be used for approximate estimations of biogas yield in the absence of any experimental data from anaerobic digestion experimentation. The results obtained from co-digestion of wastes yields more when compared to the yield of individual wastes.