Pre-treatment experiments for the use of Cynara Cardunculus L. as a substrate for the production of biogas

• Autor(es): Oliveira, I. D. B. ; Lageiro, Manuela ; Di Berardino, Santino ; Gominho, Jorge ; Duarte, E.
• Data: 2010
• Identificador Persistente: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.9/1167
• Origem: Repositório do LNEG
• Tipo de Documento: Objeto de conferência
• Idioma: Inglês
• Contribuidor(es): Repositório do LNEG

Descrição

The purpose of the present study was to explore and evaluate the influence of different pretreatments on Cynara stalks over anaerobic digestion and potential methane production. Different pre-treatments followed by anaerobic digestion batch experiments, were carried-out to Cynara stalks feedstock in order to select the most effective combination. After selecting the most suitable inocullum/substrate (I/S) ratio, different pre-treatments: mechanical, thermal, thermal chemical and enzymatic were studied to enhance the biogas and methane yield in correlation with volatile solids (VS) reduction. The most promising pre-treatment was submitted to a final experiment, in order to set up optimized operational parameters. The thermal chemical pre-treatment applied to the substrate, in the final assay, doubled the cumulative methane yield in comparison with the trial conducted with the untreated one. The methane yield achieved was 0.59 l/g VSadded and 0.31 l/g VSadded for the pre-treated and untreated substrate respectively. The enhancement achieved is also shown in terms of VS reduction. Enzymatic pre-treatment can contibute to an improvement of untreated substrate hydrolyses and also an increase in methane yield of 18% in comparison with the one without enzymatic addition. Mechanical pre-treatment combined with the addition of enzymes enhance hydrolyses of the substrate improving inoculums efficiency however, more experiments are required within higher incubation times.