LAUSR

The environmental impacts of conventional energy sources and the policies of governments on renewable energy technologies lead to biogas generation and utilization as one of the major areas to replace conventional energy sources with renewables in a number of applications such as power generation, heating, drying and refrigeration. The non-uniform availability of biowastes in a year, the lack of studies on the potential of biogas generation with non-uniform feeding of biodigesters and the economic viability of using this technology in such situations are the major factors to be analysed for the implementation of biogas in wider applications. Therefore in this present work, analytical and experimental studies have been conducted to predict the generation of methane from the biowastes collected from student hostels, restaurants and other residential buildings in educational institutions, where the availability of biowastes is not uniform throughout a year. The Anaerobic Digestion Model 1 (ADM1) was used for analytical studies, and four portable anaerobic digesters manufactured by fibre-reinforced polyester were used in the experimental investigation. The average methane content has been observed between 52.28% and 58.01%. The variation of yield and the quality of biogas throughout years, due to non-uniform organic loading rate, are also presented. The economic benefits of implementing biogas plants in five different categories of institutions were also studied, and payback period has been obtained between 3.18 and 7.59 years, besides having a positive net present value.