Rheological properties of dairy cattle manure

Rheological properties are important for the design and modelling of handling and treating fluids. In the present study, the viscosity of liquid manure (about 10% total solids) was measured at different shear rates (2.38¿238 s¿1). The effect of temperature on the viscosity at different shear rates was also studied. The results showed that manure has non-Newtonian flow properties, because the viscosity strongly depended on the applied shear rate. The results showed also that manure behaves like real plastic materials. The power-law model of the shear stress and the rate of shear showed that the magnitude of the consistency coefficient decreased while increasing the temperature, with high values of the determination coefficient. Moreover, the results showed that the Arrhenius-type model fitted the temperature effect on manure viscosity very well (R2 at least 0.95) with calculated activation energy of 17.0 ± 0.3 kJ mol¿

Effect of inoculum addition modes and leachate recirculation on anaerobic digestion of solid cattle manure in an accumulation system

The effect of both leachate recirculation (at 40 and 50 °C) and the mode of inoculum addition (at 50 °C) on the performance of a non-mixed accumulation (i.e. fed batch) system treating solid cattle wastes was investigated, using laboratory scale reactors at a filling time of 60 days. A relatively high methane production rate (MPR) and low stratification of intermediates occur with leachate recirculation. The leachate recirculation volume flow and methane production rate are smaller at 40 °C than at 50 °C: 0·31 and 0·7 l [CH4] l¿1 [reactor] day¿1, respectively. The increased MPR at higher temperature is at one hand caused by the increase of microbial activity, at the other hand by the lower viscosity causing the increased leachate recirculation volume. Dividing the inoculum in equal doses and distributing them with the feed positively affects the system behaviour as compared to adding the same inoculum amount at the reactor bottom at the start only. Without addition of inoculum a very poor system performance was observed. The average MPR was 0·2, 0·4 and 0·5 l [CH4] l¿1 [reactor] day¿1 for the reactor without inoculum, inoculum addition at the reactor bottom and inoculum addition in different equal doses, respectively

Aenarobic digestion of solid animal waste in an accumulation system at mesophilic and thermophilic conditions : start up

The anaerobic digestion of solid animal wastes has been studied in an accumulation system (AC) at a filling time of 60 days followed by about 50 days batch digestion at 40 and 50degreesC. Poor mixing conditions during anaerobic digestion of solid wastes promote stratification of the substrate and intermediate products along the reactor height. The effect of layers stratification has also been followed in the AC system. The results showed a pronounced stratification of both CODdis and VFA concentrations along the AC system height. The temperature had a minor effect on the methane yield. The results also showed that methanogenesis was rate limiting in the AC system while the hydrolysis was the rate-limiting step during batch digestion

A dispersion based model for anaerobic digestion of solid cattle waste in a stratified thermophillic accumulation system

A dynamic model has been developed to describe the anaerobic digestion of solid cattle waste in an accumulation system (AC), To calibrate the model an experiment was carried out at a lab-scale AC at 50 degrees C. The predicted methane production shows a very good agreement (i.e. R-2 = 0.998) with the experimental data. However less agreement is evident for the intermediates. After model validation the model was applied to study the effect of different aspect ratios on the system performance. An optimum aspect ratio of 2-3 could be determined

Influence of temperature fluctuation on thermophilic anaerobic digestion of municipal organic solid waste

A laboratory-scale experiment was carried out to assess the influence of temperature fluctuation on thermophilic anaerobic digestion of municipal organic solid waste (MOSW). Heating failure was simulated by decreasing temperature suddenly from 55 °C to 20 °C suddenly; 2 h time is needed for temperature decrease and recovery. Under the conditions of 8.0 g/(L·d) and 15 d respectively for MOSW load and retention time, following results were noted: (1) biogas production almost stopped and VFA (volatile fatty acid) accumulated rapidly, accompanied by pH decrease; (2) with low temperature (20 °C) duration of 1, 5, 12 and 24 h, it took 3, 11, 56 and 72 h for the thermophilic anaerobic digestion system to reproduce methane after temperature fluctuation; (3) the longer the low temperature interval lasted, the more the methanogenic bacteria would decay; hydrolysis, acidification and methanogenesis were all influenced by temperature fluctuation; (4) the thermophilic microorganisms were highly resilient to temperature fluctuation