1st Edition
Bioenergy Production by Anaerobic Digestion Using Agricultural Biomass and Organic Wastes
Interest in anaerobic digestion (AD), the process of energy production through the production of biogas, has increased rapidly in recent years. Agricultural and other organic waste are important substrates that can be treated by AD.
This book is one of the first to provide a broad introduction to anaerobic digestion and its potential to turn agricultural crops or crop residues, animal and other organic waste, into biomethane. The substrates used can include any non-woody materials, including grass and maize silage, seaweeds, municipal and industrial wastes. These are all systematically reviewed in terms of their suitability from a biological, technical and economic perspective. In the past the technical competence and high capital investment required for industrial-scale anaerobic digesters has limited their uptake, but the authors show that recent advances have made smaller-scale systems more viable through a greater understanding of optimising bacterial metabolism and productivity. Broader issues such as life cycle assessment and energy policies to promote AD are also discussed.
1. Sustainable Agriculture and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Jonathan S. West
Part 1: Legislation-Energy Policy
2. Energy and Agricultural Policy in Relation to Biomethane, with Particular Reference to the Transport Sector
Beatrice Smyth
3. Biomethane Production with Reference to Land Use Change
Surajbhan Sevda, Deepak Pant and Anoop Singh
Part 2: Feedstocks
4. Grass and Grass Silage: Agronomical Characteristics and Biogas Production
Joseph McEniry, Nicholas E. Korres and Padraig O’Kiely
5. Maize and Maize Silage for Biomethane Production
Markus Neureiter
6. Suitability of Microalgae and Seaweeds for Biomethane Production
John A. H. Benzie and Stephen Hynes
7. Organic Wastes for Biomethane Production
Anoop Singh
8. Industrial Residues for Biomethane Production
Markus Ortner, Bernhard Drosg, Elitza Stoyanova and Günther Bochmann
Part 3: Anaerobic Digestion Technology
9. Anaerobic Digesters: Perspectives and Challenges
Abdul-Sattar Nizami, Bradley A. Saville and Heather L. MacLean
10. Biogas Upgrading and Compression
Prasad Kaparaju, Saija Rasi and Jukka Rintala
11. Storage and Distribution of Biomethane
Nicholas E. Korres
12. Variation in Anaerobic Digestion: Need for Process Monitoring
Nicholas E. Korres and A.S. Nizami
13. General Principles of Data Warehouse and Data Mining in Anaerobic Digestion
Nicholas E. Korres, Anastasios Dekazos, Dimitris N. Argyropoulos, Ammar Ahmed and Paul Stack
Part 4: Genetics and Population Dynamics
14. Microbial Communities and their Dynamics in Biomethane Production
Dimitris N. Argyropoulos, Theodoros H. Varzakas and John A. H. Benzie
15. The Role of Molecular Biology in Optimizing Anaerobic Digestion and Biomethane Production
Dimitris N. Argyropoulos, Charoula C. Psallida and John A. H. Benzie
Part 5: Sustainability in Anaerobic Digestion
16. Life Cycle Assessment as a Tool for Assessing Biomethane Production Sustainability
Nicholas E. Korres
17. The Use of Digestate as a Substitute for Manufactured Fertiliser
Brian Chambers and Matthew Taylor
18. The Sustainability of Small-Scale Anaerobic Digesters at Farm Scale
Phillip Hobbs and Allan Butler
19. Biogas Technology for Developing Countries. An Approach to Sustainable Development
M.S. Dhanya, Shiv Prasad and Anoop Singh
Concluding Remarks
Appendix: Anaerobic Digestion Application in a Typical Cambodia Family Farm- a Case Study
Andrea Salimbeni and Giuliano Grassi
Index
Biography
Nicholas E. Korres is a researcher at the University of Arkansas, USA.
Padraig O’Kiely works at Teagasc, the Irish Agricultural Authority, Ireland.
John A.H. Benzie is a Professor in the Environmental Research Institute at University College Cork, Ireland.
Jonathan S. West is a senior scientist at Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, UK.
"The rapid uptake of anaerobic digestion throughout Europe to achieve energy and nutrient recovery from organic wastes, has led to a commensurate increase in the technical literature around waste digestion. This timely publication provides an excellent synthesis of our present understanding whilst highlighting the outstanding problems. It provides both researchers and practitioners a easy route into this challenging subject area." – Nigel Horan, University of Leeds, and Chair of Aqua Enviro Ltd, UK
