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Subject: Farm, Machinery and Power × Author: Arya, Deepika × Type: Thesis ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Development of a silpaulin material tubular biogas plant and studies on defoaming characteristics of different defoamers for mitigation of foaming
    (G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, 2022-10) Arya, Deepika; Arun Kumar
    Biogas technology can sufficiently meet the energy needs of rural communities and also help to mitigate the negative impacts of careless biomass resource burning.Currently, the total biogas production in India is 2.07 billion m3/year. This is quite low as compared to its potential, which is estimated to be around 29–48 billion m3/year.There are several biogas plant designs that can produce both biogas along with fertilizer as a byproduct. Biogas production in mountainous areas is insufficient and it is expensive to build and install biogas plants.For the best performance of a biogas plant, its design, operation efficiency, and economic viability are crucial variables that can be altered to enhance small-scale residential biogas plant adaption in rural regions. Therefore, a small Tubular type biogas plant (0.5m3) was designed and installed to check the operation efficiency and economic feasibility and compared with the Prefabricated balloon type and the Pant RCC biogas plant. Different parameters affecting the biogas production such as Total Solids, Volatile Solids, pH and Total alkalinity were measured on the weekly basis and biogas produced and its pressure were measured daily. The study shows that the daily biogas production per cubic meter for Tubular type was equivalent to balloon type biogas plant during psychrophilic temperature conditions. However, the highest biogas production was recorded in the Pant RCC biogas plant during psychrophilic and mesophilic temperature conditions with maximum pressure throughout the year. The cost of installation of Tubular type biogas plant lowest as compared with Pant RCC and Balloon type biogas plant. The highest methane content was 61.21% for Pant RCC followed by 53.6 % for Tubular type, 51.78% for Balloon type and biogas plant. Thus,Tubular type flexible designs can be suggested for rural hilly areas. Foaming is one of the major problems that occasionally occur in biogas plants, affecting negatively the overall digestion process and resulting in adverse operational, economic and environmental impacts.The foam can be categorized as stable and unstable, of which stable foam defines the foaming potential. The foaming potential of Tubular type, Balloon type and Pant RCC was determined and found for both psychrophilic and mesophilic temperature conditions as the temperature is one of the factors causing foam. The highest stable and unstable foam ratio was found to be 0.14 and 0.28 for the Tubular type,0.18 and 0.25 for balloon type, and 0.26 and 0.28 for Pant RCC biogas plantduring psychrophilic temperature range. The highest stable and unstable foam ratio was found to be 0.19 and 0.51 for Tubular type, 0.26 and 0.59 for balloon type, and 0.39 and 1.20 for Pant RCC biogas plant during mesophilic temperature range. The maximum stable foam ratio was found in Pant RCC biogas plant which implied that Pant RCC biogas plant has a problematic foaming situation. After foaming problem was identified, a batch experiment was conducted in order to evaluate the foam-reduction efficiency and to investigate the influence on process performance of sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate, calcium carbonate and urea in batch reactors. The four defoamers was tested for three different concentrations with three replications and were 0.1%v/v, 0.2%v/v and 0.5%v/v.The foam reduction of 20% was achieved with 0.1%v/v sodium bicarbonate, 40% with 0.1%v/v for sodium carbonate, 16% with 0.5%v/v calcium bicarbonate and 44% with 0.5%v/v urea with a maximum biogas production of 23 liters.Thus, urea was found to have best potential to be used as a defoamer which does not affect the biomethanation process negatively.