Experimental Study on Dry Mesophilic Co-Fermentation of Chicken Manure and Corn Straw for Biogas Production

摘要

Compared to traditional wet fermentation, dry fermentation has advantages in biogas production, such as high volume gas yield. While, there are few researches carried out on the parameters which affect the biogas production. The objective of this research is to investigate the methane production potential of dry mesophilic co-fermentation of chicken manure and carbon rich corn straw. Two key parameters (TS and C/N ratio), each parameter with three different levels, were adopted to determine the optimal parameters in terms of biogas yield and methane content in biogas. The corn straw was pretreated by sodium hydroxide (3% w/w) before added to the digester. All digesters were operated under temperature of 37°C for 35 days. Results show that the highest biogas production yield of 297.2ml/g TS and the highest methane content of 68.3% were obtained at the C/N ratio of 25:1 and the TS of 25%. The experiments at TS concentration of 30% failed in producing biogas because of the highly acidic environment (pH=5.8) at the very beginning. In addition, the ratio of inoculum which was one of the main parameters for dry fermentation was also investigated. The results indicate that the biogas yield and the initial methane content increases with the higher value of inoculum's ratio.