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a,*
Centre for Pollution Control and Energy Technology, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry 605 014, India
b
School of Environmental Sciences, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam 686 008, India
Received 21 December 2006; received in revised form 20 January 2007; accepted 21 January 2007
Available online 26 March 2007
Abstract
Studies are presented on new types of anaerobic digesters in which chopped or dry crushed Ipomoea carnea was fed without any other
pretreatment, in an attempt to develop commercially viable means of utilizing the otherwise very harmful plant.
Two types of solid-feed anaerobic digesters (SFADs) were studied. The rst type had a single vessel in which the bottom 35% portion
was separated from the top portion by a perforated PVC disk. The weed was charged from the top and inoculated with anaerobically
digested cowdungwater slurry. The fermentation of the weed in the reactor led to the formation of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) plus some
biogas. The leachate, rich in the VFAs, was passed through the perforated PVC sheet and collected in the lower portion of the vessel. The
other type of reactors had two vessels, the rst one was fully charged with the weed and the second received the VFA leachate. With both
types were attached upow anaerobic lters (UAFs) which converted the leachate into combustible biogas consisting of 70% methane.
All SFADs developed very consistent performance in terms of biogas yield within 17 weeks of start. The two-compartment reactors
yielded signicantly more biogas than the single-compartment reactors of corresponding total volume, and the reactors with which
anaerobic lters (AF) were attached yielded more biogas than the ones without AF. The best performing units generated 2.41 m3 of biogas per m3 of digester volume, as compared to 0.10.2 m3 of biogas, m 3 d 1, obtainable with conventional digesters. This indicates the
viability of this technology.
The spent weed can be vermicomposted directly to obtain good soil-conditioner cum fertilizer; earthworm Eudrilus eugeniae produced
540 mg vermicast per animal every day, achieving near total conversion of feed to vermicast in 20 days. The proposed systems, thus,
makes it possible to accomplish total utilization of ipomoea.
2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Ipomoea carnea; Anaerobic digesters; Upow anaerobic lters; Biogas; Vermicompost
1. Introduction
The amphibious weed Ipomoea (Ipomoea carnea) is one
of the most productive of macrophytes. It grows profusely
on water bodies and adjoining marshy lands, often jostling
out most other plant species. Throughout the modern and
post-modern era as indeed in the premodern times as well
scientists have striven hard to nd ways to destroy, control, or utilize this and other weeds. But the weeds continue
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: Prof.S.A.Abbasi@gmail.com (S. Gajalakshmi).
0960-8524/$ - see front matter 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2007.01.024
energy. Such energy can be obtained in the form of methane-rich biogas by anaerobic digestion of the weeds. But
even though this is one of the most attractive of the weed
utilization options, its large-scale exploitation thus far
has been limited for the following reasons (Gajalakshmi
et al., 2006):
(a) The weeds cannot be fed to the conventional xeddome and oating-dome biogas digesters, which are
extensively used in most of the third world countries
to generate biogas from animal dung-water slurry.
This is because the weeds do not ow out of the digester exit along with water, as the animal dung-water
slurry does, but, instead, accumulates in the digester
to eventually clog it. Even when fed as partial feed
supplement along with animal dung slurry, the weeds
eventually clog the digesters (Bouallagni et al., 2004;
Santosh et al., 2004). As a result the digesters become
non-functional a few weeks after the start-up with
weed-feed. In a like manner weeds also clog the continuously stirred tank reactors (CSTRs) used in most
developed countries for anaerobically digesting piggery and dairy wastes.
(b) The volatile solids content of aquatic weeds is rarely
above 5%, and 9395% of the weed phytomass is
generally comprised of water (Abbasi and Nipaney,
1993; Abbasi and Ramasamy, 1999; Sankar Ganesh
et al., 2005). Thus, even the whole plants represent
a rather lean source of VS and if a weed-water slurry
is made as digester feed it is even leaner in VS than
the whole plants. The eective space VS loading in
digester of such a feed would give a very poor energy
yield per unit digester volume. But 7585% of the cost
of any anaerobic digestion process is consumed by
the reactor (Selvaganesan, 1999; Abbasi and Khan,
2000) and enhancing the methane yield per unit reactor volume is essential to make the process viable.
I. carnea (also named I. stulosa) is fast emerging as the
most problematic of the weeds in India and other regions
of the tropical world (Schwarz et al., 2003; Ghosh and
Singh, 2005; Selvaganesan, 1999; Tamijarassy, 2001). We
have, therefore launched a programme to nd ways and
means of gainful utilization of I. carnea so that the cost
of mechanically removing it from land/water can be partially or fully recovered from the gains. As a part of these
initiatives we have studied solid-feed anaerobic fermentation of I. carnea.
Apart from overcoming the problems of reactor
operation and reactor economics mentioned above, the
advantage of solid-feed process, as compared to the conventional anaerobic digestion process, is that the feed does
not have to be liqueed. This has the potential of not only
saving on expenses but also making the process simpler,
hence more easily utilizable, even by semi-skilled persons.
This advantage is particularly signicant in the rural situations where I. carnea is available in large quantities but
813
814
SFAD
SFAD
SFAD
SFAD
SFAD
SFAD
SFAD
SFAD
per day, to make comparison easy as this value is independent of reactor size and incorporates the eect of feed loading rate, volatile solids content of the feed, etc.
2.5. Vermicomposting of spent weed
The spent weed was subjected to vermicomposting by
earthworms Eudrilus eugeniae in vermireactors described
earlier (Gajalakshmi et al., 2001a,b,c,d). The reactors were
fed at the rate of 25 g spent weed (dry weight basis) per litre
of vermireactor volume and had the initial population of
seven adult worms per litre of reactor volume. The C:N
ratio of ipomoea and of the vermicast was determined as
per APHA (1997) and Rao (1993).
3. Results and discussion
Six samples randomly taken from freshly harvested and
minced whole ipomoea plants had TS, VS and C:N ratios
14%, 8.4% and 21, respectively. The corresponding values
of samples from the homogenized dry weed were 100%,
59% and 21.
The pattern of biogas yield obtained from dierent variants of SFADs is presented in Fig. 1. The scatter in the biogas yield from replicates (as shown in the gure) was
generally within 35 15 ml. The scatter remained the same
even as the biogas production increased (Fig. 1b, d, f and
h) leading to progressively lesser relative error. In highyielding reactors such as SFAD II A AF, SFAD II B
AF, and SFAD II C AF, the relative error dropped to
less than 2% on most occassions. This indicates a high
degree of reproducibility considering the fact that SFADs
are heterogeneous-feed and unstirred reactors.
Fig. 1b, d, f and h also reveals that biogas production
rises substantially as the digesters age up till 1112 weeks
of the start. In subsequent weeks the biogas production
becomes more or less steady with only a gentle rise.
The observations on the extent of compaction of the
feed with time in the various reactors is summarized in
Table 1. Of the two forms of ipomoea used, the dry crushed
form gets compacted faster than the fresh chopped form.
This enables better augmentation of the digesters operated
with dry crushed ipomoea than the ones operated with the
fresh chopped form. The signicant extent of compaction
even after four months of reactor operation, which enables
replenishment of as much as 25% of the digester space with
new feed, and the gently rising trend in biogas production
(Fig. 1) indicate that the digesters would give as much, or
better, output for several months to come.
The other salient points that emerge from Fig. 1 and
Table 1 are:
(i) Reactors with separate compartments for leachate
collection are more ecient than the ones with single-compartment.
(ii) Dry crushed plants expectedly yield more biogas per
unit reactor volume than the fresh chopped plants
2500
SFAD I
SFAD I - AF
3000
2500
SFAD II A
SFAD II A - AF
3000
2500
SFAD II B
SFAD II B - AF
3000
2500
SFAD II C
815
2000
1500
1000
500
0
2000
1500
1000
500
0
2000
1500
1000
500
0
SFAD II C - AF
2000
1500
1000
500
0
1
11
13
15
17
19
11
13
15
17 19
Weeks
Fig. 1. Biogas yield from dierent types of SFADs. The lines present average values, the standard deviation is shown at each data point.
4.0
2.6
14.4
18.0
58.8
46.2
52.6
53.4
18.3
12.3
24.5
30.6
231.2
211.1
495.0
504.5
SFAD II C
SFAD II B
SFAD II A
SFAD I
15.0
17.4
16.2
17.3
49.8
54.1
52.4
53.0
131.4
152.4
141.9
151.5
436.2
473.9
918.0
928.5
28.9
33.4
83.2
88.8
95.9
104.0
97.4
98.5
12.9
10.0
14.8
16.0
37.5
39.8
41.7
41.0
113.0
87.6
129.6
140.1
328.5
348.6
730.5
718.3
23.9
18.6
76.0
82.1
69.7
74.0
77.5
76.3
7.8
7.9
8.8
8.5
29.7
30.9
32.8
39.6
68.3
69.2
77.0
74.4
260.1
270.6
574.6
693.7
14.5
14.6
45.1
43.6
55.2
57.4
61.0
73.6
2.1
1.4
2.8
3.5
26.4
24.1
26.2
28.8
Feed
relled
(g)
Feed
compaction
(% of the
reactor
volume)
Feed
compaction
(% of the
reactor
volume)
Feed
relled
(g)
Void caused in
the reactor
compartment
due to feed
compaction (ml)
Feed
compaction
(% of the
reactor
volume)
Month I
Reactor
Table 1
Rate of compaction of the feed material attained in SFADs
Month II
Void caused in
the reactor
compartment
due to feed
compaction (ml)
Feed
relled
(g)
Month III
Void caused in
the reactor
compartment
due to feed
compaction (ml)
Feed
relled
(g)
Feed
compaction
(% of the
reactor
volume)
Void caused in
the reactor
compartment
due to feed
compaction (ml)
Month IV
816
817
818