Design and construction of mini biogas digester for family use

The biogas digester is composed of a green house made with hollow sunlight sheet and metal supporting frame, a membrane digester with a gas storage bag combined in one, a stainless steel sink, a stainless steel outlet, a biogas filter and a biogas booster pump:

1. Biogas production of 2m3/day is good enough for a family

2. It is a DIY kit small scale biogas system for convenient transport and easy assembly.

3. It is surface mounted, there is no need for digging or heavy construction.

4. It can be assembled within 2 hours by anyone with manual and video guidance.

5. Treated organic waste locally, use biogas for cooking, electricity or feed garden with nutritious liquid fertilizer.

6. Used for family, farm, restaurant, hotel, resort to treat organic waste, such as food waste, sewage sludge, animal waste.

7. Light weight and easy to install, packed in carton box.

8. Life span more than 10 years - made of stainless steel frame

9. Raw material of green house and PVC biogas storage bag

10. Specification 156*120*195cm

11. Methane Content 65% which is excellent for cooking
 
 
Construction video:
 
 
 
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DIY kit assemble mini biogas digester for family use


Calculation of feeding ratio for 1000 liter biogas digester

To my understanding 1000 liter/40 = 25 liter. So it is advisable to feed 25 liter of food waste mixed with water. It means, your food waste is already included in that 25 liter. I have read from this elsewhere, the maximum ratio of food waste to water you can apply is 1:1 (though to me its too much for the microbes to handle). Roughly the maximum weight of food waste you can put is 12.5 kg in which you add another half of water to add up to 25 liter as total mixed. However its up to you what level of total solids you want to practice by reducing the food waste within that 25 liter. The more effluent you take out from the digester, the more bacteria you will discard and that may affect whole digestion process and becoming slower in producing gas.

Construction of 45 liter biogas biodigester for beginner

To construct a simple biogas digester in the photo above is easy. The materials you need are readily available at any hardware store near your residential area.

Basically the system consist of:

1. Inoculum
2. Biogas biodigester
3. Biogas storage
4. Connection between biodigester and its biogas storage

Inoculum
Inoculum is a starter for the anerobic fermentation process to begin. It consist of consortium of microbes to help in digesting suitable raw material and able to turn them into biogas and effluent that is more environment friendly within a short period of time compared to conventional aerobic composting.

Biodigester

What is a biodigester? The function is to contain the fermentation process of food waste occurred in an aerobic condition without any oxygen.

Biogas storage
Used tyre tube to contain and store biogas produced from the fermentation.

Connector
A silicon clear host to connect gas produced from biodigester to the storage bag.

Other accessories and materials needed
PVC pipe, silicon gel, plastic and metal valve, etc.

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Inoculum preparation for biogas generation

The most cheapest and easiest way to produce an inoculum is using digestate from working biogas digester. They are consist of active culture with stable activity because consist of varieties of microbes working together or consortium.

Next source is by taking a scoop of slurry or sediment from anaerobic pond. These are also active microbes we can used directly to produce biogas.

If you happen to live nearby cattle farm, dung is another source of microbes that can produce biogas.But to start with cow dung we need to mix it with water and ferment until it mature in which produces biogas.

Do not mistaken biogas with carbon dioxide. Biogas is flammable while CO2 is not.

So to produce biogas you can start with things that already around you.


Want to construct your own biogas biodigester? Click here!

HRT - hydraulic retention time is period taken for a waste to be digested to produce biogas completely at particular temperature

I am very lucky able to find old air temperature data at my place. The average is like 26.8 celcius. So, according to David David William House 's graph, the approximate HRT is 45 days. So, it is safer for me to decide to choose 50 days HRT for my digester. To determine how much to feed daily is by calculating = digester volume (liter) / HRT (day) = 200 liter/50 days = 4 liter/day. Again, rule of thumb do not get solid food waste over 50% of daily feeding volume. In my case for 4 liter feeding, 2 kg of food waste is the maximum volume then mix with 2 liter of water to a total of 4 liter. If you do not have confident and do not want to get your system sour lets try less than 50% food waste of your daily feeding volume. Please try and error, experiment with your system and you will learn a lot finding the most optimum condition to run your system. Want to construct your own biogas biodigester? Click here!