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digester.
Internship at Off-grid Gas & Fertilizers
Ltd.
DIGESTING FOOD WASTE TO PRODUCE BIOGAS AND HYDROPONIC FERTILIZER.
Arthur Michelet | ETE-70424 | March - June 2016
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2 ABSTRACT
In sight of environmental and societal changes, new ways of dealing with our waste are called for.
Fossil energy resources and mineral nutrients are depleting, while our waste is accumulating in
dumps, emitting methane freely to the atmosphere and leaching nitrates in our waters. In this
paper, I look at the possibility for small-scale biogas to tackle these problems by setting itself as a
missing link in the center of the carbon, water, nutrient and energy cycles. I present a small-scale
biogas digester design that was built in Canada. Theoretical mass balances are presented for this
digester size that can theoretically produce up to 380 L biogas/day. Run by A. Phillips, that design
produced 134 L of biogas/day with 2 kg of kitchen waste/day and produced 3.35 L of
digestate/day. I present the same design integrated into a commercial hydroponic greenhouse,
growing hydroponic basil on adapted digestate containing 800 ppm of NH4-N. Based on
theoretical results, the design achieves a payback time of 10 years with propane prices of 1.8 €/kg
and digestate prices of 0.25 €/L.
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3 INTRODUCTION
This internship was structured around the design and building of a biogas digester. It started with
some engineering consulting for Brandy Gallagher at O.U.R. Eco-village on Vancouver Island, BC
which involved using different waste streams to produce enough energy to run a shower. Four
months later we were able to complete a small-scale biogas system 1300 km away, on a farm near
Calgary, Alberta.
During this time, Kealan first gave me the opportunity to own the project, being there for me when
I needed his help. I spent about a month at O.U.R. eco-village brainstorming with the people there
to understand their desires, designing a system that would fit their needs with the restrictions of
the technology. The first idea for the design was to build a system on a trailer, with 2x 400L tanks
made out of welded steel drum. The trailer would have everything integrated onto it, from the feed
input to the biogas shower system. It would be funded by a grant from an initiative of the
Government of British Columbia, The British Columbia Agri-Innovation Program, Growing Forward.
The application was on the way (see Annex 1) and the project was moving slowly forward.
However, after a month there, Kealan and I decided with Brandy that the eco-village was not yet
ready resource-wise for the building of such a system. Indeed, such a system would require a
recurrent and reliable human presence to coordinate its use, something the eco-village was unable
to provide on the long-term once I would leave the place, which I had to do eventually.
The project took a new turn for Kealan and me. We had no client and no project anymore but still
had the desire to work and create something together…
In one week, I had found funding from a connection in New York and he had found a workshop
space in Alberta. We packed my 1986 van with our possessions and hit the road for a 12-hour trip
over the Rockies.
In Alberta we had the resources to build a system and so we got started, components lists were
made, agreements were changed (the system was being built for me to bring back to Europe), trips
were made to Calgary and we started measuring, welding, screwing, cutting, sanding, painting,
coating and grinding… We had momentum and collaborated relatively well so that the project
moved satisfyingly forwards.
Still, building such a complex machine takes a while, mistakes are made and fixed, budgets have to
be remade, components can’t be found and have to be ordered, the design gets adapted…
All along, Kealan spent time teaching me, patiently showing me the do’s and the don’ts, explaining
the function of every component. He taught me how to grind, weld, cut pipes, glue them, assemble
gas fittings and plumbing, how to get a drum water-tight, work wood, hook up complex electrical
systems, build a flare with old car parts, protect metal from corrosion with different coatings, buy
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materials at professional stores, communicate with the right engineering terms and assemble
about 170 different items into a fully-functional biogas digester.
My goals for my Masters’ Internship were well met… I definitely got “hands-on experience.”
In addition to this work, I was able to see several small scale biogas systems in operation and discuss
them with the operators, as well as perform maintenance tasks and analyze performance data that
has been produced by two biogas systems.
In this paper however, the focus is on small-scale or decentralized treatment of organic waste.
These digesters aim to deal with the waste from households, communities, small agro-businesses,
small farms… Significantly smaller amounts of feedstock than an industrial dairy farm and therefore
smaller digesters with less economies of scale.
Small-scale biogas is only slowly spreading in the industrialized world although it has been
demonstrated and successfully adopted in developing countries like India, Vietnam, Costa Rica and
countries of Africa (Thi et al. 2015).
Due to their smaller scale, these small digesters are often considered by the AD community experts
and professionals to be economically unappealing, and are therefore discarded as unrealistic or as
having little economic value. However, a different approach than the traditional financial
assessment of such units shows that there is much value to be created with small-scale AD in the
industrialized world (Gell, 2008).
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4 MATERIALS AND METHODS
This design consists of two 400 L tanks, a Feedstock Tank and a Digester Tank. The gas produced in
the Digester Tank is cleaned by two filters and stored temporarily in a floating gas holder. It is then
used in a spark-ignited biogas water heater to directly provide hot water for the shower. Digestate
is sent directly into a first container where it is stored until a certain level is attained. Once that
level is attained, the Digestate is pasteurized and then sent to a mesh separating the solids from
the liquids. The liquids are then sent directly to a sub-surface drip irrigation system to amend
nutrients to the eco-village orchard. The whole system would run on two 12V batteries fed by
600W of solar panels on the trailer roof.
Figure 1 Side view of a 3-dimensional sketch of the biogas system designed for O.U.R. eco-village
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Figure 2 Two-dimensional sketch of a top view of the biogas system designed for O.U.R. eco-village
All further references to “the system”, “the design” or “the digester” refer to the design presented
in Figure 3. This overview shows the major key components of the system. The order of the
different components follows the path of the feedstock entering the digester through the
InSinkErator© (1) and coming out in the form of biogas at the Stove (12) and as liquid digestate
through the Overflow (13).
disclosure allowed
Figure 3 Picture of the finished biogas system in June 2016
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4.1.3 Data collection methodologies
The data presented in the following sections are the results obtained on A. Phillips’ system during
the months of March to June 2016. The system that Kealan and I built is similar enough to consider
that the results obtained on A. Phillips’ digester are comparable to the projected results on the
new system.
A. Phillips was filling an Excel sheet (see Annex 2) to monitor his inputs (dish water and food waste),
the digestate levels and the gas pressure in his two storage tanks (before and after cooking with
the gas).
Thermostat °C 35
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She conducted personal experiments between December 2013 and January 2014 to assess the
quality of her digestate as fertilizer and to study how to adapt her digestate to better suit her needs
for hydroponic fertilizer.
Analyses have been done on the digestate at the time, by the company Agrichem Analytical on
Saltspring Island. The results can be found in Table 5.
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5. RESULTS
Degradability 0.80
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4.6 EXPERIMENTAL DATA
Based on the data obtained by A. Phillips on his digester, shown in Figure 5., we can say that the
biogas production has been very constant over the 74 days of running time (2-Mar-16 to 8-Jun-16).
The average biogas production observed was 134.4 L/day with an R² of 0.9936. This is due to a
constant quantity and quality of food and dish water inputs as well as constant running parameters
for the digester (pump and mixer timers, thermostat T°). The average daily inputs of wet food waste
were 2.05 kg /day (R²=0.9844) and 1.37 kg/day (R²=0.9963) of dish water. The mass ratio of fresh
waste to dish water is of 1.5 in average. This amounts to a production of 65.4 liters of biogas per
kg of wet food waste and of 39.3 liters of biogas per kg of feed slurry. It is not possible to determine
the Influence on biogas production of using dish water to complement the fresh food waste rather
than normal water, low in BOD. Digestate production is also constant, with an average of 3.35 L/day
(R²= 0.9539). An overview of these numbers can be found in Table 4.
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12000 160,0
R² = 0,9844
R² = 0,9936
140,0
10000 R² = 0,9539
120,0
6000 80,0
60,0
4000
40,0
2000
20,0
0 0,0
0,00 10,00 20,00 30,00 40,00 50,00 60,00 70,00 80,00
Days
Cumulative Gas Production Cumulative Food Waste Cumulative Dish Water Cumulative Digestate
Figure 4 Cumulative biogas production (L), Food Waste (kg) and Dish Water (kg) fed as well as Digestate
output (L) in function of running days.
Regarding digestate composition, the results obtained by Agrichem on J. Squier’s digestate, from
the same digester design and also run on kitchen waste, reveal high Nitrogen, Potassium,
Magnesium and Calcium contents. These results are presented in Table 5. for both the raw
digestate as well as for digestate that has been adapted for use in a basil-growing hydroponics
facility. This digestate has been pasteurized and pH-adjusted with phosphoric acid. Pasteurization
releases some of the ammonium present in the solution through volatilization, and lowering the
pH with phosphoric acid has an effect on the solubility of Mg and Ca cations, while increasing
phosphorous content.
In order to further adjust the digestate to be used hydroponically, it should be diluted down to
about 2000ppm of total dissolved solids (TDS) with water, rainwater being ideal for the task. (J.
Squier, 2016, Conversation).
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Table 5 Chemical analysis of digestate obtained from kitchen waste, before and after pasteurization and
pH adjustment. Sampled on December 03 2013
Raw Hydroponic
pH 8.06 7.38
Further, J. Squier has tested the digestate obtained with her biogas system to run her hydroponic
greenhouse system. She has observed that once pasteurized, pH-adjusted and diluted down to
2000 ppm of TDS with rainwater, basil plants fed with adapted digestate had the same
development rate than plants grown on commercial hydroponic solutions (the control). Also, the
basil plants were of similar quality (taste, leaf color, smell, appearance) than the control.
Plant growth rate was however smaller than the control, total plant biomass being between 50 to
80% of control (J. Squier, 2016, conversation).
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5 DISCUSSION
In the case of A. Phillips’ tests, 2.05 kg of kitchen waste are added per day in average, resulting in
a longer retention time of about 50-60 days. The gas production has been calculated to 134 L/day,
amounting to 65.4 L of biogas per kg of kitchen waste. This result is smaller than theoretical
expectations, however biogas yields depend completely on the exact energy content of the used
waste. To know the real potential of the waste used, other analyses should be done purposefully
for that. It is therefore not very relevant to draw conclusions about the efficiency of the digester
based on the gas output only.
Comparing results with other biogas data found in the scientific literature is not always relevant,
every study being done with a particular feed source that will always be different. Also, most
studies are done batch-wise or at pilot-scale (Agrahari and Tiwari, 2013). Equally, not much data
has been published on the use of kitchen waste as feedstock, whereas grey water, animal manure
or human feces have been relatively more studied (Lettinga et al. 2001).
However, common accepted figures for small-scale biogas production can be found and are
presented below;
• 0.350 m3CH4/kg COD removed; or 1 kg BOD removed results in 0.35 m3 methane. The
production of black water and organic kitchen waste is 100g BOD per person per day,
resulting in 35L methane per person per day (Zeeman et al. 2007).
• Based on studies ran in Nepal with the Red Cross, 27 L biogas from faeces per person per
day are produced under operational temperatures of 26-30°C. If including organic kitchen
waste, it increases to 62 L biogas per person per day, with a methane content ranging from
57% to 78% (Löhri et al. 2010).
Comparing these results with ours, we see that we obtain 134 L/day with 2 kg of kitchen waste/day
(the equivalent of 5 peoples’ kitchen waste). That amounts to 27 L biogas/person/day. These
results are comparable, in the same range as the ones obtained by Zeeman and Löhri in The
Netherlands and Nepal.
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5.2 COMMENTS ON THE DESIGNS
The system that Kealan and I have designed and decided to build is the result of a process of trials
and elimination of different strategies that each have their own advantages. In order to get a
deeper understanding of what we created and why we did it that way, here is a list of criteria that
we wanted to be coherent to as much as possible;
- The digester has to be made from wide-spread, standard and common materials that can
be easily found all over the world. The idea here is that we want the design to be
reproducible anywhere in the world, with minimum interference from supply limitations.
- The digester has to be user-friendly or understandable by a wide profile of users. The idea
behind this criterion is that we want the users to be able, as much as possible, to
troubleshoot and fix their systems should any minor issues arise. Off-grid Gas & Fertilizers
Ltd. also provides a comprehensible operators’ manual (see Annex 4) to its clients
containing a troubleshooting section that should assist the users in this process. In
continuity with this idea, we want as many parts of the digester to be independently
changeable in case of a punctual part failure. That way, a problem can be solved by simply
changing one defect part rather than shipping the whole system back to the factory for a
complicated rebuild.
- The digester has to be reliable and low-cost. We want the system to be built from solid
materials without aiming for the highest grade products available. For example, building
the two tanks out of stainless steel is arguably a more long-term solution, however steel
tanks with an adequate epoxy coating can also be used for a tenth of the price, without
creating problems over time. Also, stainless steel is more complicated to weld and shape
by ourselves and would require costly qualified labor to build accordingly to the design.
- The digester should be made of ecological and human friendly products without
compromising the quality of the design. For example, the steel mixers inside the digester
must be protected from corrosion by an adequate coating. Kealan has found that the right
mix of linseed oil with paint thinner provided a similar if not better protection than the
traditional epoxy coatings used in the industry. This makes the building process much safer
for the builder that doesn’t have to use toxic epoxy resins.
- The digester has to be easily transportable and shippable. Therefore, it should be easy to
disconnect the different units of the digester, fit it efficiently in a shipping container and
then reassemble the system at its final location. Ideally, this should be feasible by the client
himself with some clear guidance from the operators’ manual.
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6 CONCLUSION
Small-scale biogas displays interesting results; it is capable of efficiently handling a wide range of
organic wastes, it transforms this waste into biogas for energy and digestate to be used as fertilizer.
It is relatively low-tech and low-cost to build and can run for long amounts of time without
encountering problems when fed properly. When incorporated in a hydroponic greenhouse system
it allows an optimal use of all resources provided and therefore the value of the digester is greatly
increased.
It seems like there is a future for small-scale biogas in the Western world, despite the widespread
opinion that it is not economically feasible. To me, it seems that the key to the spread of similar
small-scale, local and decentralized technologies relies in the perception of value by people. It
seems that for some people like A. Phillips and J. Squier, the appeal of dealing with their own waste
and creating fertilizer for themselves outweighs the additional cost and energy of handling their
own biogas system. They perceive value in the services provided by their digester based on their
set of ecological and personal values. In situations where this personal set of values is not shared,
it’s not surprising to hear that small-scale biogas isn’t appealing.
When it comes to commercializing such technologies, it’s therefore critical to identify the right
niche markets and client profiles.
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7 REFERENCES
Agrahari, Ravi, and GN Tiwari. 2013. 'The production of biogas using kitchen waste', International Journal of Energy
Science, 3.
Andrea Horbelt, Manuel Maciejczyk, Bastian Olzem, Stefan Rauh. 2011. "Biogas can do it - Facts, arguments and
potentials." In, edited by Fachverband Biogas e.V.
European Biogas Association brochure, 2011. "Biogas - Simply the best."
Bettina Kretschmer, Claire Smith, Emma Watkins, Ben Allen, Allan Buckwell, Jane Desbarats, Daniel Kieve. 2013.
"Technology options for feeding 10 billion people - Recycling agricultural, forestry & food wastes and
residues for sustainable bioenergy and biomaterials." In, edited by Institute for European Environmental
Policy. Brussels: Science and Technology Options Assessment.
Gell, Kealan. 2008. 'Review of small scale, community biogas in the industrialized world', Wageningen University,
Netherlands: Community Composting Network.
Hartmann, H., and B. K. Ahring. 2006. "Strategies for the anaerobic digestion of the organic fraction of municipal solid
waste: An overview." In Water Science and Technology, 7-22.
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digestion of solid organic waste', Waste Management, 31: 1737-44.
Lettinga, G. 2008. 'Towards feasible and sustainable environmental protection for all', Aquatic Ecosystem Health &
Management, 11: 116-24.
Lettinga, G., J. B. Van Lier, J. C. L. Van Buuren, and G. Zeeman. 2001. 'Sustainable development in pollution control
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Lohri, C, Y Vögeli, A Oppliger, R Mardini, A Giusti, and C Zurbrügg. 2010. 'Evaluation of biogas sanitation systems in
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Thi, N. B. D., G. Kumar, and C. Y. Lin. 2015. 'An overview of food waste management in developing countries: Current
status and future perspective', Journal of Environmental Management, 157: 220-29.
Ward, A. J., P. J. Hobbs, P. J. Holliman, and D. L. Jones. 2008. 'Optimisation of the anaerobic digestion of agricultural
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Zeeman, Grietje, Katarzyna Kujawa, B Meulman, and F Kwant. 2007. 'Full scale demonstration of vacuum collection,
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