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Determination of the Anaerobic Volatile Solids Reduction Ratio of Animal Manure Using a Bench Scale Batch Reactor

Published by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, St. Joseph, Michigan www.asabe.org

Citation:  2015 ASABE Annual International Meeting  152189216.(doi:10.13031/aim.20152189216)
Authors:   John P. Chastain, William Bryan Smith
Keywords:   Anaerobic digestion, manure treatment, swine manure. Abstract. The volatile solids reduction ratio is defined as the mass of volatile solids destroyed divided by the mass of volatile solids loaded into a digester. It is not uncommon to include anaerobic digestion as one process in a multi-step on-farm manure treatment system. Consequently, VS reduction information is needed to reflect the actual solids matrix of the manure fed to digesters for a variety of system configurations. Most of the VS reduction ratios available in the literature were obtained from completely mixed, steady-state digesters, or from small bottle biochemical methane potential tests. Both of these methods are plagued by a variety of difficulties including errors associated with biogas leaks, VS storage within the reactor, and measurement errors from small sample sizes with high solids contents. A bench scale batch method was developed to determine the VS reduction ratio of animal manure that avoids many of the difficulties and errors associated with using reactor bottles or pilot scale digesters. The method was tested using whole swine manure with total solids contents ranging from 8.56 to 18.56 g/L and organic loading rates ranging from 6.10 to 13.74 gVS/L. The mean VS reduction ratio for nine reactors, three per loading, was 0.61, and was in excellent agreement with the value of 0.63 published by Hill (1991). The method was shown to be accurate and repeatable as long as low organic loadings were used and sufficient time was allowed for the digestion to be completed.

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