1. Methane production from mesophilic fed-batch anaerobic digestion of empty fruit bunch of palm tree
- Author
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Lahboubi, Nabila, Kerrou, Omar, Karouach, Fadoua, Bakraoui, Mohammed, Schüch, Andrea, Schmedemann, Kai, Stinner, Walter, El Bari, Hassan, and Essamri, Azzouz
- Abstract
In this work, mesophilic anaerobic digestion (AD) of empty fruit bunch (EFB) of the date palm tree was investigated in order to evaluate the application for this type of substrate, using a fed-batch process. Several parameters were monitored such as temperature, pH, and methane production throughout the experiments. The biodegradability was calculated by determining the volatile solids (VS) and total solids (TS) and the end of each added load. The process was started up with 8 gVS/L of inoculum, provided from a full-scale reactor from the molasses processing industry. The digester was loaded in fed-batch mode by increasing gradually the load from 1 to 3.5 gVS/L. The results showed that the methane yield coefficient and the organic loading rate (OLR) were 118.5 NmL/gVS and 0.27 gVS/L.d, respectively. Three kinetic models were tested the best fit (modified Gompertz models, modified Richard, and transference equation). The results show that the modified Gompertz model was the most suitable for fitting the EFB substrate and more adjusted to the experimental results.
- Published
- 2022
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