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Title: | Aerobic Pre-treatment for Performance Enhancement of Batch Anaerobic Digestion of Napier Grass |
Author(s): | Rekha, B.N., Pandit, A.B. |
Document(s): | |
Abstract: | Pretreatment of napier grass prior to its anaerobic digestion was investigated using anaerobic sludge containing mixed microbial consortia as inoculum under aerobic conditions in batch bioreactors at 37°C. The activities of few extracellular hydrolytic enzymes was monitored during the aerobic pretreatment. The highest activity of hydrolytic enzymes was obtained at 8 h of pretreatment. Filter paper cellulase had a maximum activity of 0.84 IU/ml, while carboxymethyl cellulase, amylase and xylanase were produced to give enzyme activity upto 0.40 IU/ml. The biogas yield obtained after anaerobic digestion of the pretreated napier grass ranged between 0.1 and 0.21 m3/kg TS added. The highest and lowest values were obtained for 8 and 36 h of pretreatment, respectively. Eight hours of pretreatment of napier grass prior to anaerobic digestion demonstrated a 20% higher methane yield when compared to the napier grass without pretreatment. The consortia of microorganisms in the sludge demonstrated a useful potential in the production of hydrolases acting on major macromolecules of napier grass. A correlation was observed between high enzyme activity and high methane yield at 8 h of aerobic pretreatment suggesting that a short pretreatment period could be an alternative option for increasing solubilization and promoting methane productivity from napier grass. |
Keywords: | anaerobic digestion, aerobic pre-treatment, napier grass, hydrolytic enzymes |
Topic: | R&D on Biomass Conversion Technologies for Heating, Electricity and Chemicals |
Subtopic: | Anaerobic digestion for biogas production |
Event: | 21st European Biomass Conference and Exhibition |
Session: | 2DV.4.23 |
Pages: | 1256 - 1260 |
ISBN: | 978-88-89407-53-0 |
Paper DOI: | 10.5071/21stEUBCE2013-2DV.4.23 |
Price: | FREE |