[Digestion] Consistency of Digester Feed

[Anand Karve]

Dear Mr. Jones,
our group has tested poultry manure in the ARTI compact biogas plant, which
is a moving drum type of biogas plant, constructed from two plastic water
tanks. Using a digester of 1000 litres and a gas holder of 750 litres, we
found that a daily input of about 3 kg poultry manure yielded daily about
600 to 700 litres of biogas. The commercial poultries regularly use
antibiotics in the feed, but apparently it did not affect our biogas
production. We have tested pulped castor seed which has about 50% oil. With
a daily input quantity of about 1 kg castorseed, we got daily about 700
litres biogas. We have never tested tallow. However, we have regularly used
food waste, vegetable waste and fruit peels (banana, papaya, mango) in our
system with excellent results. There are several restaurants and canteens
that are regularly using our biogas plants, in which food waste and kitchen
waste are used as feedstock.
I again want to emphasize here that one should not bother about the C/N
ratio. Even with pure sugar, which has the C/N value of infinity, we get 1
kg biogas (about 800 litres) from 1kg sugar.
Yours
A.D.Karve


On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 6:14 PM, Jones, Robin (TWP) <RJones at twp.co.za> wrote:

>  The bio-digester we are considering will obtain feeds from third parties
> (i.e. Manure from Feedlot for cattle, Litter from Chicken Farm & Tallow
> from Abattoir). There is a concern that the owner and operator of the
> digester will have no control over the consistency of each of these feeds
> (e.g. The instance one of the third parties introduces an Antibiotic
> Campaign due to sickness/disease). On a commercial scale has anyone had
> experience with this matter, relative to obtaining finance and how was this
> type of  risk mitigated? Alternatively does anyone know of any commercial
> size plants that experienced similar problems after start-up resulting in a
> negative impact on their financial model? ****
>
> ** **
>
> Robin Jones****
>
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>
>


-- 
***
Dr. A.D. Karve
Trustee & Founder President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)
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