[Digestion] Dung burning vs Anaerobic digestion

Shaaban Kassuwi yaaser67 at yahoo.co.uk
Thu Nov 15 23:14:02 CST 2012


Dear Members of Digestion group,
The arguments that Cow dung produces low biogas when used in Anaerobic digestion it is the fact which is well known, and the reason has been attributted to high content of Lignin materials which are difficult to be digested by microbes. However, a number of research has been going on to enhance biogas production from cow dung. One of the technique which seems to be promising is the Co-digestion with another substrate with for example high Nitrogen contents, as we know Cow dung is rich in Carbon, so when is digested with eg Fish waste which is rich in N in form of Protein could raise the C:N ratio and improve biogas production. To do this one however needs to establish exact amount of substrate to be co-digested to avoid the problem of Ammonification and Long Chain Fat Acid (LCFA) caused by Protein and Fat Rich substrates. So I would suggest people to start co-digesting and will see improvement to their digestors
Kassuwi
 
Kassuwi, S.A.A
IDARA YA MOLEKULI BAIOLOJIA NA BAIOTEKNOLOJIA (IMBB)
CHUO KIKUU CHA DAR ES SALAAM 
MWALIMU J. K. NYERERE KAMPASI 
Box 35179
DAR ES SALAAM,
TANZANIA



________________________________
DearDate: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 06:13:03 +0530
From: Anand Karve <adkarve at gmail.com>
To: For Discussion of Anaerobic Digestion
    <digestion at lists.bioenergylists.org>,    Alastair.Ward at agrsci.dk
Subject: [Digestion] Dung burning vs. anaerobic digestion
Message-ID:
    <CACPy7SfmGuUHNbk6CtJscecRFrLHoGjfs4cpL1sWxE4ZKMtnmg at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Dear Mr. Ward,
Thanks a lot for making us aware of the situation in Denmark. I agree with
you that situations differ from country to country and that one should do
what is best suited to one's needs and also what the environment allows.
Please remember that the posting that I reacted to refered specifically to
cow dung and its author complained about extremely low biogas yield. My
experience is mainly from India. In my posting I specifically refered to
dung of ruminents, i.e. bovine cattle and water buffalo. In India, these
animals mainly graze and they eat mainly grass, which is dry except for the
rainy season. The dung of such animals has very little digestible matter in
it. Excreta of poultry and pigs have much more digestible matter than those
of ruminents.   In India, dung cakes are made only from dung of cattle.
They are sun-dried. You must be aware of the fact that except for Muslims
and Cristians, dead bodies are cremated in India. There is a big market in
India for dung cakes as fuel for creamtion of dead bodies. Compressing
agricultural waste into fuel briquettes (as boiler fuel) has emerged as a
big Industry in India. Dung can also serve as boiler fuel.  People are even
looking at filter presses, which would squeeze the water out of dung, so
the solids can be coverted into burnable briquettes.
Yours
A.D.Karve

On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 2:35 PM, Alastair James Ward <
Alastair.Ward at agrsci.dk> wrote:

>  Dear A.D. Karve,****
>
> ** **
>
> I disagree that manure only consists of lignin, mucus and microorganisms.
> There is a lot of digestible but undigested protein, fat and carbohydrate
> in manure, not to mention a high concentration of fatty acids which are
> just one or two steps in the biological pathway away from methane
> production. It is not disputed that plant material usually produces more
> biogas than manure, but I think that you have to stand back and consider
> what factors are most important to the very varied users of this list. I
> live in northern Europe in a country with a high animal density. It has
> been calculated that if we could collect all manure produced, all organic
> wastes available and use all non-food producing land for energy crop
> production and put it all into biogas plants, we would still not make a
> very large impact on the national energy requirement (sorry but I forget
> the exact figures). However, we view anaerobic digestion as a method of
> treating wastes, with the recycling of nitrogen and phosphorous being of
> great importance. The fact that we can produce energy is a nice bonus that
> (hopefully) makes the whole process financially feasible. Burning manure is
> not a realistic option here. As an example, we produce in excess of 20
> million fattening pigs every year, in a country of less than 6 million
> people. As a result, we have a lot of wet manure to deal with and anaerobic
> digestion is widely viewed as the best available technology to do so. Pig
> manure has a low dry matter content so the energy input necessary for
> drying, not to mention space to do so and any other issues regarding odour
> emissions etc makes the drying and burning of wet manures impractical. We
> also want to keep the N to put back into the soil and thus reduce the need
> for artificial fertiliser and the non-degradable carbohydrates in digestate
> are useful in maintaining soil carbon levels.****
>
> As I understand, the original post was not from a northern European
> country but there are still many advantages to anaerobically digesting
> manure in warmer climates. Biogas is certainly a cleaner and more flexible
> fuel than dry material for burning, the fact that one can quite easily run
> lights and a small generator on biogas being major advantages. I came
> across a paper a couple of years ago that suggested the increased use of AD
> in preference to burning of organic material could be linked to an
> improvement in the health of people in rural Indian communities,
> specifically eye problems due to smoke as I remember.****
>
> Please, consider the motives of the people posting on this list before you
> tell us that we are wasting our time digesting manure. If Kyle has manure
> available I suggest he continues to use it in his digester, the low yield
> can be compensated for by having a large supply that is easily available.
> If he has any plant wastes available then certainly put these in as well to
> boost yield, but I would not recommend actively collecting large amounts of
> biomass from the surrounding area, the time and energy used to do so may
> negate the gain. ****
>
> ** **
>
> Med venlig hilsen ****
>
> *Alastair James Ward*
> Post doc.****
>
> *Inst. for Ingeni?rvidenskab
> *Aarhus Universitet
> Blichers All? 20, Postboks 50
> 8830 Tjele****
>
> ** **
>
> Tlf.: 8715 7645
> Mobil: 4112 2494
> Email: Alastair.Ward at agrsci.dk****
>
>
> Tlf.: 8715 6000
> Web: www.agrsci.au.dk <http://www.agrsci.dk/>****
>
> [image: Description: Logo]****
>
>
> --
> ***
> Dr. A.D. Karve
> Trustee & Founder President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)
>
>
>
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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 09:57:01 +0530
From: Murali Krishna <bmkrishna6 at gmail.com>
To: For Discussion of Anaerobic Digestion
    <digestion at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Subject: Re: [Digestion] Dung burning vs. anaerobic digestion
Message-ID:
    <CAPSO_1cMmB8_Rr1PLoArXC4Fnr8+n3F=X6422vHDvh5-XRSaeA at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Good day Dr. Karve,

While agreeing with you that some Indian villagers are making cow
dung/bufalloe dung cakes for thermal application, a majority of the
villagers have stopped making cow dung flakes.  Labour is becoming
precarious day by day and the daiary industry is finding it extremely
difficult to organize their routine activities ....forget about making cow
dung cakes and selling them.  The amount of methane left into the
atmosphere should also be taken into consideration.  Everyone will agree
that green or dry grass/leaves contain more amount of methane but why
should they run around to fetch these.  These units can simply recycle the
avaialble dung, extract methane (other wise a menace in rainy season),
generate power and the cake from the digestate  can be bunt if they wish so
or it is a rich manure.  The grasses and green leaves matter can be fed to
animals.

Undoubtedly recycling of cow dung/buffaloe dung via anerobic digestion is
the best way.  It serves more than one purpose.

Regards,

Krishna
India.


On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 6:13 AM, Anand Karve <adkarve at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Mr. Ward,
> Thanks a lot for making us aware of the situation in Denmark. I agree with
> you that situations differ from country to country and that one should do
> what is best suited to one's needs and also what the environment allows.
> Please remember that the posting that I reacted to refered specifically to
> cow dung and its author complained about extremely low biogas yield. My
> experience is mainly from India. In my posting I specifically refered to
> dung of ruminents, i.e. bovine cattle and water buffalo. In India, these
> animals mainly graze and they eat mainly grass, which is dry except for the
> rainy season. The dung of such animals has very little digestible matter in
> it. Excreta of poultry and pigs have much more digestible matter than those
> of ruminents.   In India, dung cakes are made only from dung of cattle.
> They are sun-dried. You must be aware of the fact that except for Muslims
> and Cristians, dead bodies are cremated in India. There is a big market in
> India for dung cakes as fuel for creamtion of dead bodies. Compressing
> agricultural waste into fuel briquettes (as boiler fuel) has emerged as a
> big Industry in India. Dung can also serve as boiler fuel.  People are even
> looking at filter presses, which would squeeze the water out of dung, so
> the solids can be coverted into burnable briquettes.
> Yours
> A.D.Karve
>
> On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 2:35 PM, Alastair James Ward <
> Alastair.Ward at agrsci.dk> wrote:
>
>>  Dear A.D. Karve,****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> I disagree that manure only consists of lignin, mucus and microorganisms.
>> There is a lot of digestible but undigested protein, fat and carbohydrate
>> in manure, not to mention a high concentration of fatty acids which are
>> just one or two steps in the biological pathway away from methane
>> production. It is not disputed that plant material usually produces more
>> biogas than manure, but I think that you have to stand back and consider
>> what factors are most important to the very varied users of this list. I
>> live in northern Europe in a country with a high animal density. It has
>> been calculated that if we could collect all manure produced, all organic
>> wastes available and use all non-food producing land for energy crop
>> production and put it all into biogas plants, we would still not make a
>> very large impact on the national energy requirement (sorry but I forget
>> the exact figures). However, we view anaerobic digestion as a method of
>> treating wastes, with the recycling of nitrogen and phosphorous being of
>> great importance. The fact that we can produce energy is a nice bonus that
>> (hopefully) makes the whole process financially feasible. Burning manure is
>> not a realistic option here. As an example, we produce in excess of 20
>> million fattening pigs every year, in a country of less than 6 million
>> people. As a result, we have a lot of wet manure to deal with and anaerobic
>> digestion is widely viewed as the best available technology to do so. Pig
>> manure has a low dry matter content so the energy input necessary for
>> drying, not to mention space to do so and any other issues regarding odour
>> emissions etc makes the drying and burning of wet manures impractical. We
>> also want to keep the N to put back into the soil and thus reduce the need
>> for artificial fertiliser and the non-degradable carbohydrates in digestate
>> are useful in maintaining soil carbon levels.****
>>
>> As I understand, the original post was not from a northern European
>> country but there are still many advantages to anaerobically digesting
>> manure in warmer climates. Biogas is certainly a cleaner and more flexible
>> fuel than dry material for burning, the fact that one can quite easily run
>> lights and a small generator on biogas being major advantages. I came
>> across a paper a couple of years ago that suggested the increased use of AD
>> in preference to burning of organic material could be linked to an
>> improvement in the health of people in rural Indian communities,
>> specifically eye problems due to smoke as I remember.****
>>
>> Please, consider the motives of the people posting on this list before
>> you tell us that we are wasting our time digesting manure. If Kyle has
>> manure available I suggest he continues to use it in his digester, the low
>> yield can be compensated for by having a large supply that is easily
>> available. If he has any plant wastes available then certainly put these in
>> as well to boost yield, but I would not recommend actively collecting large
>> amounts of biomass from the surrounding area, the time and energy used to
>> do so may negate the gain. ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Med venlig hilsen ****
>>
>> *Alastair James Ward*
>> Post doc.****
>>
>> *Inst. for Ingeni?rvidenskab
>> *Aarhus Universitet
>> Blichers All? 20, Postboks 50
>> 8830 Tjele****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Tlf.: 8715 7645
>> Mobil: 4112 2494
>> Email: Alastair.Ward at agrsci.dk****
>>
>>
>> Tlf.: 8715 6000
>> Web: www.agrsci.au.dk <http://www.agrsci.dk/>****
>>
>> [image: Description: Logo]****
>>
>>
>> --
>> ***
>> Dr. A.D. Karve
>> Trustee & Founder President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)
>>
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Digestion mailing list
>
> to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
> Digestion at bioenergylists.org
>
> to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
>
> http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/digestion_lists.bioenergylists.org
>
> for more information about digestion, see
> Beginner's Guide to Biogas
> http://www.adelaide.edu.au/biogas/
> and the Biogas Wiki http://biogas.wikispaces.com/
>
>
>


-- 
Regards.

Murali Krishna
Chairman
Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India.
Ph:+91-40-24339999, 24333333,243355555, 24333555
www.villagevisionindia.com
*

*
*
*
**
*
*
* **Never put water down the drain when there may be another use for it*
*Save the Environment*

*
*
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------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 05:21:56 +0000
From: Dr M V Potdar <potdarmv at hotmail.com>
To: <digestion at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Subject: Re: [Digestion] Dung burning vs. anaerobic digestion
Message-ID: <SNT106-W39D73E2EE7A47485248F33C8520 at phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"


Dear Mr Krishna,
Burning of agricultural wastes and cattle dung for cooking and water heating is a common feature in many villages in India and other countries. We must aggressively promote anaerobic digestion for biogass and compost through affordable technologies and introducing suitable laws for judicious use of household and farm wastes including cattle dung and urine. I agree with you that anaerobic digestion is the best way for converting waste into wealth. On my own farm, I am using all wastes generated by cattle, humans and crops for producing biogass and rich compost.
Dr M V PotdarConsulting AgronomistHyderabad, India


Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 09:57:01 +0530
From: bmkrishna6 at gmail.com
To: digestion at lists.bioenergylists.org
Subject: Re: [Digestion] Dung burning vs. anaerobic digestion

Good day Dr. Karve,

While agreeing with you that some Indian villagers are making cow dung/bufalloe dung cakes for thermal application, a majority of the villagers have stopped making cow dung flakes.  Labour is becoming precarious day by day and the daiary industry is finding it extremely difficult to organize their routine activities ....forget about making cow dung cakes and selling them.  The amount of methane left into the atmosphere should also be taken into consideration.  Everyone will agree that green or dry grass/leaves contain more amount of methane but why should they run around to fetch these.  These units can simply recycle the avaialble dung, extract methane  (other wise a menace in rainy season), generate power and the cake from the digestate  can be bunt if they wish so or it is a rich manure.  The grasses and green leaves matter can be fed to animals.


Undoubtedly recycling of cow dung/buffaloe dung via anerobic digestion is the best way.  It serves more than one purpose.

Regards,

Krishna
India.


On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 6:13 AM, Anand Karve <adkarve at gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Mr. Ward,
Thanks a lot for making us aware of the situation in Denmark. I agree with you that situations differ from country to country and that one should do what is best suited to one's needs and also what the environment allows. Please remember that the posting that I reacted to refered specifically to cow dung and its author complained about extremely low biogas yield. My experience is mainly from India. In my posting I specifically refered to dung of ruminents, i.e. bovine cattle and water buffalo. In India, these animals mainly graze and they eat mainly grass, which is dry except for the rainy season. The dung of such animals has very little digestible matter in it. Excreta of poultry and pigs have much more digestible matter than those of ruminents.   In India, dung cakes are made only from dung of cattle. They are sun-dried. You must be aware of the fact that except for Muslims and Cristians, dead bodies are cremated in India. There is a big market in
 India for dung cakes as fuel for creamtion of dead bodies. Compressing agricultural waste into fuel briquettes (as boiler fuel) has emerged as a big Industry in India. Dung can also serve as boiler fuel.  People are even looking at filter presses, which would squeeze the water out of dung, so the solids can be coverted into burnable briquettes.


Yours
A.D.Karve

On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 2:35 PM, Alastair James Ward <Alastair.Ward at agrsci.dk> wrote:




Dear A.D. Karve,

I disagree that manure only consists of lignin, mucus and microorganisms. There is a lot of digestible but undigested protein, fat and carbohydrate in manure, not to mention a high concentration of fatty acids which are just one or two steps in the biological pathway away from methane production. It is not disputed that plant material usually produces more biogas than manure, but I think that you have to stand back and consider what factors are most important to the very varied users of this list. I live in northern Europe in a country with a high animal density. It has been calculated that if we could collect all manure produced, all organic wastes available and use all non-food producing land for energy crop production and put it all into biogas plants, we would still not make a very large impact on the national energy requirement (sorry but I forget the exact figures). However, we view anaerobic digestion as a method of treating wastes, with the
 recycling of nitrogen and phosphorous being of great importance. The fact that we can produce energy is a nice bonus that (hopefully) makes the whole process financially feasible. Burning manure is not a realistic option here. As an example, we produce in excess of 20 million fattening pigs every year, in a country of less than 6 million people. As a result, we have a lot of wet manure to deal with and anaerobic digestion is widely viewed as the best available technology to do so. Pig manure has a low dry matter content so the energy input necessary for drying, not to mention space to do so and any other issues regarding odour emissions etc makes the drying and burning of wet manures impractical. We also want to keep the N to put back into the soil and thus reduce the need for artificial fertiliser and the non-degradable carbohydrates in digestate are useful in maintaining soil carbon levels.


As I understand, the original post was not from a northern European country but there are still many advantages to anaerobically digesting manure in warmer climates. Biogas is certainly a cleaner and more flexible fuel than dry material for burning, the fact that one can quite easily run lights and a small generator on biogas being major advantages. I came across a paper a couple of years ago that suggested the increased use of AD in preference to burning of organic material could be linked to an improvement in the health of people in rural Indian communities, specifically eye problems due to smoke as I remember.


Please, consider the motives of the people posting on this list before you tell us that we are wasting our time digesting manure. If Kyle has manure available I suggest he continues to use it in his digester, the low yield can be compensated for by having a large supply that is easily available. If he has any plant wastes available then certainly put these in as well to boost yield, but I would not recommend actively collecting large amounts of biomass from the surrounding area, the time and energy used to do so may negate the gain. 



Med venlig hilsen 




Alastair James Ward


Post doc.

Inst. for Ingeni?rvidenskab
Aarhus Universitet


Blichers All? 20, Postboks 50
8830 Tjele





Tlf.: 8715 7645
Mobil: 4112 2494
Email: Alastair.Ward at agrsci.dk




Tlf.: 8715 6000
Web: www.agrsci.au.dk





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





_______________________________________________

Digestion mailing list



to Send a Message to the list, use the email address

Digestion at bioenergylists.org



to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page

http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/digestion_lists.bioenergylists.org



for more information about digestion, see

Beginner's Guide to Biogas

http://www.adelaide.edu.au/biogas/

and the Biogas Wiki http://biogas.wikispaces.com/






-- 
Regards.

Murali Krishna
Chairman
Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India.
Ph:+91-40-24339999, 24333333,243355555, 24333555www.villagevisionindia.com



            



Never put water down the drain when there may be another use for it

Save the Environment






_______________________________________________
Digestion mailing list

to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
Digestion at bioenergylists.org

to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/digestion_lists.bioenergylists.org

for more information about digestion, see
Beginner's Guide to Biogas
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/biogas/
and the Biogas Wiki http://biogas.wikispaces.com/                           
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Message: 4
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 11:03:24 +0300
From: Paul Muthui <paul at takamotobiogas.com>
To: Digestion at bioenergylists.org
Subject: [Digestion] Digester Heating by a thermosiphon system
Message-ID:
    <CAJAkcuTQdaQgmAvVaC_Qwqdm702atW4SKKZUzvQVX-nhM4kTjw at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Good Day All,

I am looking into ways if heating my biogas digester to increase specific
gas yield. I have thought of using a thermosiphon, whereby I heat my
primary liquid and then pass it through coils inside the digester.

Has anyone done this before and what would be the expected efficiency of
such? Is it an idea worth pursuing?
-- 
*Best Regards*,



*Paul S. Muthui*
*Research & Development Engineer*
*Schutter Energy Ltd.*
*P.O **Box 50178 - 00100, Nairobi*
*Tel: 0738 689 788*

*Mobil**e: 0724 815**594*
paul at takamotobiogas.com
www.takamotobiogas.com
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Message: 5
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 09:13:09 +0000
From: David Fulford <davidf at kingdombio.com>
To: Takamoto <kyle at takamotobiogas.com>
Cc: For Discussion of Anaerobic Digestion
    <digestion at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Subject: Re: [Digestion] Biogas production
Message-ID: <5510486768.20121115091309 at kingdombio.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

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to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
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for more information about digestion, see
Beginner's Guide to Biogas
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/biogas/
and the Biogas Wiki http://biogas.wikispaces.com/



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