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Bioresource Technology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biortech
University of Hohenheim, State Institute of Agricultural Engineering and Bioenergy, Garbenstrae 9, 70 599 Stuttgart, Germany
University of Hohenheim, Dairy Science and Technology, Garbenstrae 21, 70 599 Stuttgart, Germany
h i g h l i g h t s
Full-scale measurement of the rheological properties of biogas slurry.
Feedstock and TS-content of the slurry have a large impact to the viscosity.
Mechanical disintegration improves the ow behavior of biogas slurry.
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 10 June 2014
Received in revised form 7 August 2014
Accepted 9 August 2014
Available online 19 August 2014
Keywords:
Anaerobic digestion
Rheological properties
In-line viscometer
Full-scale biogas production
a b s t r a c t
An in-line viscometer was developed to determine the rheological properties of biogas slurries at a
full-scale biogas plant. This type of viscometer allows the investigation of ow characteristics without
additional pretreatment and has many advantageous aspects in contrast to the rotational viscometer.
Various effects were studied: alterations in the feedstock structure, increasing total solid (TS) of the slurry
and the disintegration of the feedstock on the rheological properties. The results indicate that the PowerLaw model is sufcient for the description of the ow curve of biogas slurries. Furthermore, the use of
more brous materials increases in viscosity. The increase in TS of 10.115.1% resulted in a sharp increase
of the viscosity. The mechanical disintegration of the feedstock positively inuenced the rheological
properties, but the effects were more apparent at higher TS.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Biogas is known to be a versatile resource with many advantageous aspects for a future, environmentally friendly energy supply.
The anaerobic conversion of organic materials like energy crops,
manure and waste can replace fossil fuels for heat and energy production and can be used, after proper upgrading, as vehicle fuel. A
major drawback is that the background for the design and dimensioning of agricultural biogas plants is mostly adapted from the
manure and wastewater treatment sector (Weiland, 2006). The
common digester design in agricultural biogas plants is the continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR). These techniques are widely used
for the anaerobic handling of liquid uids with a low ber content.
The modications for the digestion of crop materials are generally
based on the empirical knowledge of the constructing engineer and
on experiences with existing biogas plants. Formal research to
Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 711 459 22685; fax: +49 711 459 22111.
E-mail address: Matthias.Moench-Tegeder@uni-hohenheim.de (M. MnchTegeder).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2014.08.041
0960-8524/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2. Methods
The biogas plant of the University of Hohenheim is located at
the agricultural research station Unterer Lindenhof near Reutlingen, Germany and was designed and built for full-scale studies and
for the up-scaling of laboratory expertise (Fig. 1). The plant consists
of two main digesters and one secondary digester. Each digester
has a diameter of 14 m and a height of 6 m and is operated as CSTR
with a working volume of 800 m3. The process temperature is set
279
c_ app
sapp
V_
r
p Dp r
8L
s
p Dp r 4
gapp _ app
capp
8 L V_
gapp k y_ n1
280
Fig. 1. Flow scheme of the research biogas plant Unterer Lindenhof (Naegele et al., 2012).
Fig. 2. In-line tube viscometer of the research biogas plant Unterer Lindenhof.
281
100
80
Crushed grain
Grass silage
Maize silage
Liquid manure
Solid manure
60
40
20
0
1
7
Week
Fig. 3. Average weekly composition of the daily feedstock of digester 1 during the
rst section of this study.
study, the amount of grass silage was set to 25% and the maize
silage reduced by up to 10% in the feeding ratio.
In the second part of this work, we focused on the inuence of
the TS-content of the biogas slurry on the rheological properties.
An increase of the TS-content of the slurry was achieved by altering
the substrate mixture of the daily input. Therefore, the amount of
solid manure in the mixture was set to 50%, and the remaining
parts of the mixture were 30% liquid manure and 20% maize silage.
The amount of the daily input and the organic loading rate were
not varied.
In the third part of the study, the effect of the additional substrate pretreatment step on the rheological properties was studied.
The feeding of the digesters was set to an equal substrate mixture
with 25% liquid manure, 35% solid manure, 10% maize silage, 25%
grass silage and 5% crushed grain with the identical amount of
daily input as in the previous parts of the study.
Week 1
Week 2
Week 4
Week 6
Week 8
4
3
2
1
0
20
40
60
80
282
10
30
50
100
k
n
R2
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
2.61
1.11
0.74
0.43
2.15
0.92
0.62
0.36
1.96
0.88
0.61
0.37
1.78
0.78
0.53
0.32
1.56
0.72
0.50
0.30
1.60
0.74
0.52
0.32
1.71
0.79
0.55
0.34
1.98
0.91
0.64
0.39
15.74
0.22
0.95
12.72
0.23
0.94
10.54
0.27
0.95
10.01
0.25
0.93
8.00
0.29
0.94
7.93
0.30
0.96
8.59
0.30
0.96
10.02
0.30
0.95
R2
10.1
10.7
11.2
11.7
12.7
13.3
14.7
15.1
8.00
8.59
10.02
16.73
17.03
23.63
37.96
41.92
0.29
0.30
0.30
0.21
0.26
0.24
0.23
0.23
0.94
0.96
0.95
0.94
0.97
0.96
0.97
0.97
Week 8
of the loading rate in the existing reactor volume and the use of
low-cost lignocellusosic substrates. Overall, these actions cause
changes in the ow properties of the slurry and necessitate
technical adaptations of the agitation technology. The alterations
of the feeding can provoke a completely different particle structure
and network in the slurry and should be taken into account for a
stable plant operation (Brambilla et al., 2013; Landry et al.,
2004). Techniques for substrate disintegration were adapted to
lower the particle size and structure and thereby reduce the viscosity of the slurry. In contrast to other uids like coalwater systems,
where the particle size reduction leads to an increase of surfaceassociated interactions with a negative impact on rheological properties, the pretreatment of biomass slurries more favorably affects
the rheological properties than untreated slurries (Roh et al., 1995).
However, there is still insufcient literature on the effects of the
disintegration on the rheological behavior in the full-scale biogas
process. Hence, the aim of this section is to determine the effects
of the mechanical treatment on the ow properties at the research
biogas plant. The investigation took place over a period of 5 weeks.
The initial TS-content of the slurries was 9.8% in both digesters. The
rst 2 weeks were used for the adaption of the digesters. Then the
viscosities of the slurries were determined in the three following
weeks. The TS-content of the slurries was identical between both
digesters during this period. However, due to the high solid content in the feedstock the TS-content increased over time. This
allowed the investigation of the effects of the treatment in a range
of 10.1 to 11.7 % TS (Table 3). The results indicate that the treatment of the input substrates lead to a higher consistency factor
in digester 1 than the untreated substrates in digester 2. Furthermore, the increase in TS-content resulted in an almost doubling
of the consistency factor in both reactors. Regarding the ow
behavior index, a considerably lower ow behavior index was
determined for the treated slurry. This means that despite the
higher consistency index, the slurry of digester 1 is more sensitive
to the shear rate. This factor is a crucial point for practical application, because the viscosity of the slurry will be rebuilt without continuous mixing (Nges et al., 2012) and the higher sensitivity to
shear rate results in a more distinct shear-thinning behavior of
the slurry. Fig. 6 shows the percentage differences in apparent viscosity of the slurries of the reactors at four different shear rates.
The results suggest that the particle size reduction leads to a lower
viscosity over the whole shear range. Additionally, the differences
increase between the slurries at higher shear rates. This increase in
TS-content leads to larger differences in the viscosity. In this investigation, the viscosity of the slurry in digester 1 was always lower
than in digester 2. The differences varied in a range of 5.852.5%
and underline the large impact of the particle size on the viscosity.
This is in agreement with Tian et al. (2014), who observed increasing effects of the smaller particles sizes with higher TS. At TS lower
than 4.0%, no effects of particle size reduction were detected
(Viamajala et al., 2009). In conclusion, the rheological patterns
were more affected by the particle size with increasing TS. Therefore, the particle size reduction by mechanical disintegration is an
283
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
10
11
12
13
14
15
TS [%]
Fig. 5. Inuence of the TS-content of biogas slurry at different shear rates on the ow-behavior of digester 1.
Table 3
Comparison of the apparent viscosity and the parameters of the Power-Law model of the disintegrated slurry of digester 1 and the untreated slurry of digester 2.
App. shear rate [1/s]
TS 11.2%
Digester 2
10
30
50
100
1.56
0.72
0.50
0.30
1.66
0.81
0.58
0.37
1.98
0.91
0.64
0.39
2.09
1.08
0.80
0.53
2.68
1.12
0.75
0.43
2.97
1.45
1.03
0.66
k
n
R2
8.00
0.29
0.94
7.53
0.34
0.94
10.02
0.30
0.95
8.31
0.40
0.92
16.73
0.21
0.97
13.49
0.34
0.93
38.5
34.9
Digester 1
Digester 2
25.4
20
10
Digester 2
29.1
30
40
50
52.5
TS 10.1 %
TS 11.2 %
TS 11.7 %
18.8
10.9
12.8
20.3
Acknowledgements
16.0
6.4 5.8
Digester 1
TS 11.7%
Digester 1
10
30
50
Apparent shear rate [1/s]
100
This research was funded by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) as part of
the project Horse manure further development of technologies
for the efcient use of horse manure, FKZ 03KB064.
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