A comparative study of biogas production from water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) and chicken droppings seeded with ruminant microorganism

Abstract

A comparative study of biogas production from water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) and chicken droppings was undertaken in the laboratory for nine weeks at temperature of 28oC. Sterile chicken droppings (200g) and Eichhornia crassipes (200g) were individually mixed with 1200 ml of sterile distilled water to make a slurry in the rtion 1:6 and fed into the 4000 liters and 10000 liters capacity gallons used as the digesters, while the following organisms Stphylococcus aureus, Proteus vulgaris, Bacillus subtilis, Shigella dysentariae, Escherichia coli, salmonella typhi and Methanobrevibacter ruminatum isolated from the rumen of cow were inoculated into the digester using sterile needles. The same procedure was carried out for Eichhornia crassipes. The men quantity of biogas increased during the first five weeks reaching a peak of 3060.00 cm3 on the 5th week, after which a decline was observed for the plant waste - Eichhornia crassipes. The total average biogs produced during the 45 days experimental period was 1045cm3. In the case of chicken droppings, the highest weekly mean volume of biogas produced was 4860cm3 which occurred between 1-5th day which gradually decreases reaching the lowest volume of 58.3cm3 within 36-40th day. The statistical analysis using unpaired T-test showed no significant difference (p>0.05) in the amount of gas yield for both chicken droppings and Eichhornia crassipes. The proximate analysis of chicken droppings and Eichhornia crassipes carried out reveled that crude fat nd protein were not significantly different (p>0.0-5) from each other when compared to moisture, ash, crude fibre, crude carbohydrate, nitrogen, sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium, which were significantly different from each other