BIOMAN – Ultrasound for Biomass Digestion

• Energy produced from biogas is one of the most important renewable resources and is conditioned by a supply of substrates and waste materials compatible with responsible use of arable lands, and safe food and feed production.
• BIOMAN is an EU funded project for the investigation of several physical and enzymatic pre-treatment strategies and technology for biogas plants.
• Power ultrasound is a proven method to improve the digestion of biomass and thereby to increase the biogas yield significantly.

Biogas production with reinjection loop

BIOMAN

Biological waste materials such as manure and agricultural residues offer an abundant resource for the production, in Europe and worldwide. However, as these substrates contain a high amount of fibres (5-80% of dry matter content) with a low methane potential, the economical benefits for the operation of a biogas plant are often too low to be economically profitable due to the low biogas yield per ton. To improve the biogas yield, pretreatments (e.g. mechanical, thermal, chemical and biological) have been shown to be beneficial (Angelidaki & Ahring, 2000; Uellendahl et al., 2007). In the Bioman project, a treatment concept for the Re-Injection Loop is investigated with the goal to increase the biogas yield per ton of waste biomass, with a prerequisite that the benefits of the treatment exceed the operational costs to ensure economical sustainability.
BIOMAN will for a series of SMEs develop physical and enzymatic pre-treatment strategies and technology for biogas plants. This will enable the consortium members of SME to bring complete solutions to the market and enable the agricultural sector to run biogas plants directly on cattle manure and straw.

The Reinjection Loop

“The Re-Injection Loop” ́ is for producing biogas from recalcitrant low-energy substrates with a high content of lignocellulose by combining a range of mechanical and enzymatic treatments, see Figure 1. Downsizing, ultra sound and enzymatic treatments are technologies to be used in the Re-Injection Loop and will be applied on pre-digested and dewatered biomasses before recirculation to the biogas reactor and of key focus is the overall economic sustainability (Uellendahl et al. 2013).

Acknowledgement

BIOMAN is funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme managed by REA – Research Executive Agency: (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n0 FP7-SME-2012, 315664, “BIOMAN”.