[Digestion] elephant Dung digestion

[Hoysall Chanakya]

Dear List Users,
As a person who worked for long on Elephant Dung Digestion I am tempted to
interject.  I guess both parties in the debate are right.  As Krishna
indicates there is a lot of undigested material in elephant dung and this,
that is predominantly leaf fiber is discarded by the elephant in dung. 
This fiber is also difficult to digest in conventional biogas plants.  The
undigested biomass often rises to the top and blocks the upward passage of
biogas in the KVIC type biogas plants promoted.

The undigested portions do not mix with water as suggested by the earlier
mail.  This is because the nature of biomass feed fed to the elephants. 
Most Indians feed their elephants tree leaves and a much smaller quantity
of grass or other herbaceous feed stocks.  This make the animal dung quite
undigestible.  On the other hand it is difficult to see that many
agro-residues do not digest in nature.

Best regards
To you all
Chanakya



-- 
Dr. Hoysall Chanakya
Centre for Sustainable Technologies
(Assoc. Faculty at Centre for Infrastructure, Sustainable Transport and
Urban Planning (CiSTUP) and Centre for Contemporary Studies)
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560 012
ph 91-80-2293 3046; fax-91 80 2360 0683


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