Production of biogas from chicken and goat wastes

Abstract

One of the problems facing the world today is waste management, particularly those generated from animals. Examples of such wastes include goat waste and chicken droppings. This paper presents the performance evaluation of five 32 litre capacity biogas digesters that were used to investigate the anaerobic digestion of chicken and goat wastes. Biogas was produced from chicken and goat wastes with different mixing ratios: 100:0 (Sample I), 30:70 (Sample II), 70:30 (Sample III), 50:50 (Sample IV) and 0:100 (Sample V) from digesters 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 respectively. The digesters were charged differently with these wastes and the mesophilic ambient temperature range attained during the experiment were 26-38 oC and a slurry temperature of 25-32 oC. The result showed that the samples were capable of producing a total of 17.3, 44.3, 74.3, 86.2 and 113.2 litres of biogas respectively, using the 32 litre capacity digesters for 30 days. The result obtained from the gas production showed that sample IV produced the highest methane content of 63.3% followed by sample III with 59.4% and sample II with 59.2%. Sample I produced a methane content of 59.1% while sample V had the least methane content of 57.3%.