Details

Title:

Sweet Sorghum Biogas Plant in Temperate Regions (Belgium) - Demonstration Plant for Biogas and High Value Biofertilizer Production

Author(s):

Salimbeni, A.

Document(s):

Abstract:

Sweet sorghum is one of the most interesting energy crops. Due to its high photosynthetic efficiency (3­4%) S.Sorghum hybrids have an impressive biomass yield per hectare at all latitudes ( up till 95 tons of fresh biomass per ha per cycle). S. Sorghum is often cultivated in intensive plantations for the well known bioethanol production. Anaerobic digestion is becoming a valuable alternative for s.sorghum processing due to the lower costs and more “simple” installation. However, electricity and heat are still the main product obtained by biogas plant where s.sorghum is processed. Objective of this study is to focus on high value biofertilizer production from sweet sorghum energy crop, in order to evaluate the application of a new advanced anaerobic digestion technology to the large sweet sorghum plantations as solution for biofertilizer production on site replacing artificial fertilizers demand, thus reducing costs and GHG emissions. All of these aspects well be studied in a demonstration plant to be installed in Belgium. The following paper can be easily divided in five main studies: 1­Evaluation of Sweet Sorghum Yield in Temperate region; 2­New anaerobic digestion technology for fast sweet sorghum digestion; 3­First evaluation of digester dimension and energy yield; 4­Biofertilizer production technology; 5­Preliminary economic evaluation.

Keywords:

anaerobic digestion, biogas, digestate, pretreatment, sorghum, biofertilizers

Topic:

R&D on Biomass Conversion Technologies for Heating, Electricity and Chemicals

Subtopic:

Anaerobic digestion for biogas production

Event:

21st European Biomass Conference and Exhibition

Session:

2DO.7.3

Pages:

725 - 733

ISBN:

978-88-89407-53-0

Paper DOI:

10.5071/21stEUBCE2013-2DO.7.3

Price:

FREE