Increasing the biogas yield of manure fibers by wet explosion – demo-scale

The aim of the FiberMaxBiogas project is to demonstrate the feasibility of a new pretreatment method – wet explosion (WEX) – to increase the biogas yield of manure fibers significantly and thereby make electricity production from waste by combined heat and power (CHP) production economically feasible even at lower electricity prices. The WEX process will be installed in a continuous demo-scale reactor unit for the treatment of digested manure fibers at the biogas plant of Biokraft/Bornholm. The efficiency of the demo-scale pretreatment process will be analyzed and the combination of the pretreatment with the biogas production will be further optimized in parallel in a bench-scale set-up. The increase in biogas yield will be determined and related to the specific composition of the treated material and the wet explosion parameters applied. Furthermore, factors causing inhibition in the biogas process will be identified and their minimizing will be investigated. From these analyses the WEX process parameters will be further adjusted for achieving the highest increase in biogas yield with a low consumption of energy and oxidizing agent at the same time. An economical evaluation of the implementation of the WEX pretreatment at large-scale biogas plants will be carried out.