Predicting biogas production using kinetic model for mesophilic and thermophilic temperature regimes: a theoretical approach

Ever since global warming, largely caused by consumption of fossil fuels, has alarmed the scientists and policy makers, biomass has been gaining acceptance and currency as a means of sustainable energy generation. Biogas generation through anaerobic digestion of biomass is a promising technique of converting carbonaceous material into methane and carbon dioxide i.e major components of biogas. This work aims at determination of methane production rate based on kinetic study while taking into consideration temperature, total solids, volatile solids, residence time, and bacterial growth. We used banana waste including stem, fruit stem, peel and leaves as waste material and applied Chen & Hashimoto kinetic model to measure the methane potential. The wet anaerobic digestion process digested the banana waste inside the bioreactor for 15 days of hydraulic retention time on mesophilic temperature regime 35-40°C and 10 days for thermophilic temperature regime 55-60°C. The methane production was 14.6 m3/day using 100 kg/day of banana waste. This showed a close accord to the already observed and published data based on total solid, volatile solid, carbon to nitrogen ratio and temperature.