A farm-scale pilot plant for biohydrogen and biomethane production by two-stage fermentation
Articolo
Data di Pubblicazione:
2013
Citazione:
A farm-scale pilot plant for biohydrogen and biomethane production by two-stage fermentation / R. Oberti, A. Tenca, F. Perazzolo, E. Riva, A. Finzi, E. Naldi, G. Provolo, L.C.M. Bodria. - In: JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING. - ISSN 1974-7071. - 44:s1(2013), pp. e115.583-e115.586. (Intervento presentato al 10. convegno Conference of the Italian Society of Agricultural Engineering : Horizons in agricultural, forestry and biosystems engineering tenutosi a Viterbo nel 2013) [10.4081/jae.2013.(s1):e115].
Abstract:
Hydrogen is considered one of the possible main energy carriers for
the future, thanks to its unique environmental properties. Indeed, its
energy content (120 MJ/kg) can be exploited virtually without emitting
any exhaust in the atmosphere except for water. Renewable production
of hydrogen can be obtained through common biological processes
on which relies anaerobic digestion, a well-established technology
in use at farm-scale for treating different biomass and residues.
Despite two-stage hydrogen and methane producing fermentation is a simple variant of the traditional anaerobic digestion, it is a relatively
new approach mainly studied at laboratory scale. It is based on biomass
fermentation in two separate, seuqential stages, each maintaining
conditions optimized to promote specific bacterial consortia: in the
first acidophilic reactorhydrogen is produced production, while volatile
fatty acids-rich effluent is sent to the second reactor where traditional
methane rich biogas production is accomplished.
A two-stage pilot-scale plant was designed, manufactured and
installed at the experimental farm of the University of Milano and
operated using a biomass mixture of livestock effluents mixed with
sugar/starch-rich residues (rotten fruits and potatoes and expired fruit
juices), afeedstock mixture based on waste biomasses directly available
in the rural area where plant is installed.
The hydrogenic and the methanogenic reactors, both CSTR type,
had a total volume of 0.7m3 and 3.8 m3 respectively, and were operated
in thermophilic conditions (55, 2 °C) without any external pH control,
and were fully automated.
After a brief description of the requirements of the system, this contribution gives a detailed description of its components and of engineering solutions to the problems encountered during the plant realization
and start-up.
The paper also discusses the results obtained in a first experimental
run which lead to production in the range of previous laboratory
results, with a typical hydrogen and methane specific productivity of
2.2 and 0.5 Nm3/m3reactor per day, in the first and second stage of the
plant respectively.
At our best knowledge, this plant is one of the very first prototypes
producing biohydrogen at farm scale, and it represents a distributed,
small scale demonstration to obtain hydrogen from renewable
waste-sources.
Tipologia IRIS:
01 - Articolo su periodico
Keywords:
biohydrogen; two-stage anaerobic digestion; farm-scale pilot plant
Elenco autori:
R. Oberti, A. Tenca, F. Perazzolo, E. Riva, A. Finzi, E. Naldi, G. Provolo, L.C.M. Bodria
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