RENEWABLE ENERGY PRODUCTION THROUGH ANAEROBIC CODIGESTION OF HURA CREPITANS L. LEAVES WITH CATTLE MANURE

摘要

The increasing world-wide awareness and concern about environmental impacts of fossil fuels coupled with oil price shocks of the early 1970s and late 1980s, and likely future hikes, have lent enormous weight to a switch to renewable energy sources. Therefore, the search for alternative energy sources from organic biomass by anaerobic digestion is an ongoing effort in developed and developing countries. Anaerobic digestion is a process in which organic substrates are degraded in the absence of oxygen via enzymatic and bacterial activities producing biogas (a mixture of carbon dioxide and methane) that could be used as a renewable energy source. This technology has many benefits from economical and sustainable points of view. Besides generating biogas for energy use, the process also destroys pathogens and produces stabilized material to be used as organic compost for land application. Li et al. have observed that shortage of feedstock has become one of the major bottleneck for achieving the goals of anaerobic digestion for energy production Considerable efforts have been made by researchers to find alternative feedstocks for generation of energy through anaerobic digestion process and to improve the yield through various treatments. In spite of these efforts, more substrates are still needed to keep the biogas plants running due to the ever-increasing need of the society for sustainable energy. Hura crepitans Linn, is an evergreen tree of Euphobiaceae family that despite its abundance in Nigeria it is still being under-utilized. Being an evergreen tree, the leaves are available for biogas production all year round. The objectives of this study, therefore, were: (1) to evaluate biogas potential of Hura crepitans leaves in a batch anaerobic digestion at different loading rates LRs for biogas generation (2) to determine the effect of co-digestion of HC with CM on biogas production.